Pastor Robert Truesdale, "the Pastor from the hood"

Some portraits of my friend, Pastor Robert Truesdale, in northeast Washington, DC. He does caring grassroots work out of his very modest dwelling, which serves as his church.

He is located near the Clay Terrace project, one of the city's most challenged neighborhoods.

Pastor Truedale is truly doing the good work of ministering to and meeting the needs of the very neediest in our community - with few economic resources to call his own. He does so with a kind heart and a generous hand, because it is the right thing to do.

Jewish Folk Arts Festival / 2012

Photographs from the 19th Jewish Folk Arts Festival, made on assignment for Washington Jewish Week.  

Some of the artists pictured are musicians from the Fabrangen Fiddlers, Kolot HaLev Choir, klezmer groups Lox and Vodka, Klezcentricity, and Machaya, and some Israeli folk dancers.

Thanks to Rabbi David Shneyer for his vision and energy in sparking this biennial festival, and for Esther Siegel and  Maura Gost for their help to me in fulfilling my work.

Election Day asignments

I photographed a variety of Election Day activities on assignment for Washington Jewish Week. The voting booths were at Congregation Agudas Achim, in Alexandria Virginia; other sites included a vote-watching party at the DCJCC, a BBYO/USY bash for teens in Rockville, Maryland, and a Democratic Party victory gathering for Congressman Chris Van Hollen, also in Rockville.

Halloween Party 2012

(free Pussy Riot!)

Photographs from Nadine Bloch's always amazing Halloween party in Takoma Park, Maryland.

Boo!

Oklahoma City National Memorial

I was in Oklahoma City recently, to present my collaborative work Circles Within Circles to the Jewish University program there. My host from the Oklahoma Jewish Federation, Marcy Price, took me to the very moving Oklahoma City National Memorial, which commemorates the 168 lives lost to domestic terrorism in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred Murrah Federal Building. I had the honor and pleasure of meeting the director of the Memorial, Kari Watkins, and Marcy was my guide through the experience of encountering this exceptional national shrine.

There is a chain link fence bordering the official memorial. It has been kept full of personal remembrances, spontaneously brought to the site and maintained over the past decade and a half by fiends family, and caring citizens.

These photographs are primarily of the materials left on the fence.

They reminded of the shrines I have been documenting in DC. Hearts thrown open...