A Practice Born from Necessity

For years, the seed of this project stayed with me, shifting names and direction, but never taking root. The core was always the same. I wanted to experience presence and passion through others. Each time I felt the spark, the clarity faded and slipped into the gaps I live with. The momentum disappeared. The project dissolved.

What brought me back every time was the experience itself. Photographing a craftsperson. Watching someone fully engaged in what they do. That feeling would return with force, and then vanish again. It took a long time to understand that this was not a creative block. It was the reality of my mind. And it showed me what I needed. This had to become a focused practice. A structure strong enough to hold me to the purpose when clarity slipped away.

I eventually understood that the pull behind this project was not ambition. It was necessity. Photography is how I connect with the world. It is how I stay present. The images I make become anchors I can return to. Not memories, but proof. Evidence of something that mattered, something I want to keep alive even when I cannot feel it.

I saw this clearly when I looked back at the shipyard project. I know it was one of the greatest experiences of my life, but today I only hold the facts. The locations. The conversations. The work. Everything else is gone.

But the photographs give me something I can work with. They do not return the feeling, but they offer enough truth to imagine what lived there. Pride in a gesture. Ease in a posture. The kind of presence I felt in the moment but cannot retrieve. The images become the story when the memory cannot.

I kept encountering ways of being that cultures have honored for centuries. I could understand them intellectually, but I could not connect them to my own experience. I could not feel what they meant.

The Heart of Craft grew from this gap. It is the work I love and the practice I need. A way to stay close to the qualities I long for but cannot easily access. By witnessing these threads in craftspeople connected to their tools, I create anchors for what I cannot carry on my own. The intimacy of their process becomes a way to understand my own.

This project teaches me to slow down and stay connected, not only in my photography but in the way I move through the world. It is about showing up with intention, trusting my intuition, and creating the conditions where presence has a chance to grow.

Presence is the one thing I can hold.

When I spend time with a craftsperson, watching and listening, I sometimes wonder if a trace of their presence reaches me. I cannot know. What I do know is that photographs, recorded voices, and a sense of something meaningful passed between us are enough to bring me closer to the truth of what happened.