Photography is a currency of connection.
In a world heading toward escalating conflict, climate emergency, mass immigration, water wars and growing economic disparity, photography allows me to connect to the immediacy of my environment and grounds me to the present moment.
Reaching out to photograph the marginalized populations I encounter in my landscape connects me unexpectedly to a beauty and to a humanity that eases my own sense of isolation and despair.
An exposure can become an intimate 1/500th of a second relationship, allowing access to our shared humanity. My ongoing encounter with populations experiencing homelessness, drug addiction, incarceration and recovery help me see what I would otherwise refuse to acknowledge. It would remain overlooked and ignored.
These fractions of a second relationships of intimacy, the time it takes for an exposure, are an invitation to the Family of Man, even though it is a crazy and dysfunctional family filled with brokenness and beauty, sinners and saints.
-Joanne Arnold
Tyler