100 Years.

In a series he calls The 100 Years Project, Danish photographer Keen Heick Abildhauge shares 100 shots of 100 people who range in age from just one year to, yes, 100. Each participant has told him about a dream or a passion — the one-year-old's mother, for instance, says that her son's greatest joy is cars; 15-year-old Sofia dreams of going to space (and if that fails, learning to play the saxophone); 21-year-old Demyan wants to make a home by the sea; and, capping it all off, century-old Evdokiya says simply: "I dream of walking by myself, being independent and alive." 

Find the entire series, here. 

Visit Keen Heick Abildhauge's website, here.  

People Like Us.

I loved this story, published today by The New York Times, about photographer Shehab Uddin, who — instead of assuming that his relative wealth afforded him the privilege of taking pictures of whomever he pleased — chose to take a different approach to capturing poverty in his native Bangladesh: by getting to know his subjects and asking them how they preferred to have their stories represented. After three years of living among three different families, Mr. Uddin exhibited the final images in their neighborhoods, where they could see them. "Usually when we photograph poor people, they're never allowed to see how we photograph them," he tells James Estrin. "They had never seen a photo exhibit — here I bring the gallery to them."

Later, Uddin adds: "Though all three families are very poor, these families are not always unhappy — they have love and they enjoy their life. Poverty is not only about sadness, not only about sorrow, not only about depression. They are people like us."

Read the story by James Estrin at The New York Times, here. Photographs by Shehab Uddin.

Recommended Reading / 21.

Every Monday, words to start the week. 

This week, a snippet from Alan Light's interview with Patti Smith on Medium: "The thing that bothered me the most was when I had to return to the public eye in ’95 or ’96 when my husband died. We lived a very simple lifestyle in a more reclusive way in which he was king of our domain. I don’t drive, I didn’t have much of an income, and without him, I had to find a way of making a living. Besides working in a bookstore, the only thing I knew how to do was to make records—or to write poetry, which isn’t going to help put your kids through school. But when I started doing interviews, people kept saying 'Well, you didn’t do anything in the 80s,' and I just want to get Elvis Presley’s gun out and shoot the television out of their soul. How could you say that? The conceit of people, to think that if they’re not reading about you in a newspaper or magazine, then you’re not doing anything...It makes me understand why some human beings question their worth if they’re not making a huge amount of money or aren’t famous, and that’s not right." (Image by Annie Leibovitz.)

Find the rest of the interview, here.

A few more, just because:
-On girls and the color pink.
-Advice from Haruki Murakami.
-Play-Doh photos and Legos made of wood.
-From Alain de Botton's The Architecture of Happiness: "It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things."

More recommended reading, here. Have a happy Monday!

Ordinary/Alive.

I'll have a POV for you next week (I promise), but while I sort out the wrinkles, I thought I'd share a few words from William Martin, which I spotted here and loved.

Photos by Max Wanger.

"Do not ask your children
to strive for extraordinary lives.
Such striving may seem admirable,
but it is the way of foolishness.
Help them instead to find the wonder
and the marvel of an ordinary life.
Show them the joy of tasting
tomatoes, apples and pears.
Show them how to cry
when pets and people die.
Show them the infinite pleasure
in the touch of a hand.
And make the ordinary come alive for them.
The extraordinary will take care of itself."

Yes. Wishing you a wonderful weekend.

Non-Career Advice: Dale Megan Healey.

Non-Career Advice is a series that asks people - young, old, and in a range of occupations - for words of wisdom unrelated to work, career-building, dollars, or getting ahead.

Dale Megan Healey / Writer

Also: Teacher / observer / rescuer of cats  

Age: 29

Pay attention to what glows, even if it seems irrelevant. A few years ago, I set out to write a memoir about losing my mother. But I felt trapped in the subject matter.  As a writer, it’s good to immerse yourself in the topic you’re writing about, but I was both interested in my grief and consumed by it. So I began to write about art instead-- performance art specifically -- as a way to write about something fun for a change, and to prove to myself that I was not entirely defined by this loss.

I wrote about an artist who stalked strangers, an artist who put a frame around a piece of the sky, and an artist who crawled across the city on his hands and knees. These pieces glowed to me, and I found myself drifting towards them without knowing why. I liked art that I didn’t understand, or that made me think, “Why would someone do that?” I liked art that made me doubt it was even art--that looked more like a personal transformation, and not necessarily something made for an audience. But no matter where I pointed my gaze everything was still colored by grief.

I was frustrated at first, but looking back, this shaped me into the kind of writer that I am today. It was a triumph when I learned to write about something without mentioning my mother, and to stop using her death as a kind of barometer of meaning. Sometimes looking away from something helps me to see it clearer.

My project is still about my mother -- it’s a collection on searching for personal rituals in art and performance, amid reflections on how my relationship with her continues to evolve even though she’s gone. At first people thought I was crazy for making connections between my mother and these odd pieces of experiential art (and honestly, much of the early writing was bad). I knew there was a connection, though. I just had to write through the uncertainty to find out what it was.

--

Thanks so much, Megan. I love the idea of finding inspiration (and a voice) in unexpected places. And I love the reminder, too, that personal lives and creative interests can overlap in ways that surprise, enlighten, and elevate. More from the Non-Career Advice series, here.