By the summer of 2013 I had been working on the portrait project for three full years. I was preparing for my third exhibition and was optimistically working with a printer on a hardcover book. People began to contact me about the possibility of a portrait. One such person was Kathy Para. Her manuscript Lucky (a novel about a photojournalist in Afghanistan) was generating a lot of interest. It was due to be released by Mother Tongue Publishing in the fall and Kathy needed an author photo.

At a certain point Kathy put her hands together in a most unusual way. That was it. I could have used just her hands as a portrait - they seemed to say so much. A book publisher needs something a little less abstract, however, and so the photo below was selected.