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I am an artist-photographer-educator and photojournalism is paramount to my photographic work. On the street offers glimpses of life frozen in time. I favor urban environments as places that afford a hubbub of activity with people moving in their own spaces and unaware of others around them. This particular image is from a trip to Rome and made after breakfast with my son at Caffé de la Paix (Café of Peace) on Via di Tor Millina. While the chef in the café prepped and served us food, we had a great conversation with him and tips on places to visit and food to experience. We left the café and I turned around and saw this same gentleman step out for a smoke break (very common in Europe!) and I knew this was the image I wanted to capture. He framed the street activity.

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Trillium grandiflorum are magical: three bracts that miraculously photosynthesize with three giant, white and commanding petals. Known as birthroot, trilliums midwifed three girls, that branched into another family of three. With years of patience, trilliums will gain enough energy to bloom, fleetingly, yearly; teaching my family persistence with moments of beauty and impermanence.

This painting reflects the story of my great-grandmother. My great-grandmother and great-grandfather lived in Siberia. They were a wealthy family from the upper class. In 1917, the Russian Revolution took place and the civil war began. The communist Bolsheviks who came to power killed the rich and took away their property. My great-grandmother survived, although she lost all her property. The fate of my great-grandfather is unknown. It was impossible to talk about his disappearance. My great-grandmother's son hid his origins, because he was afraid that the new authorities would subject him to repression. Great-grandmother Anna was left alone, without money, without a husband and son and without understanding why she was punished like that. In the painting, great-grandmother Anna sits in her favorite lace blouse, with an album of family photos and forget-me-not flowers in her hands as a symbol of a request for us to remember her. On the small table on which her hand rests is a photograph of the heir to the Russian throne, Tsarevich Alexei. The photograph is a symbol of the great-grandmother's commitment to the old pre-revolutionary order. The fate of the Tsarevich is also tragic. He will be shot with the entire royal family by the Bolsheviks in 1918. The background on which the grandmother is depicted is a symbolic image of her native Siberian city as it was before Revolution, on the eve of Apocalypse.