Journey of the Heart

I created this slide show to recapture an  Underwater  experience... Being buffeted by the strong currents off the west coast of the Garden Island of Kauai, encased in a snorkel mask, flippers, and with a disposable underwater camera in hand, I took these photographs, barely able to see what I was looking at, peering through the mask, through the lens, at a constantly rolling, tumbling seascape.  I dug out this poem, Sometimes , to add to the soundtrack, from a poetry journal I kept on my frequent trips to the island to visit my mother. It contemplates identity, and the recognition that my most authentic self surfaces in communion with nature, in communion with the endless creations of the Divine.  Image by the author, Janavi Held Sometimes by Janavi Held Sometimes I am all of them! Aphrodite and the woman who craved the sea and sprouted gills at night, whose hair turned to seaweed, the woman with red-earth running in her veins and...

My first love was black and white photography… Perhaps I’m something of a minimalist, so what to do when film is all but gone, and the digital world has, seemingly, endless options?   I remember cutting class in high school to spend time in the darkroom; it was a magical place where pieces of the world I’d collected, or captured with the lens of my camera would take on a new life, altered by filters, paper choices, long or short exposures, long or short baths in the chemicals that would induce the images to appear on paper. So, to me photography is collecting bits of beauty or ugliness, faces or places, the animate , and the inanimate, to bring them home, and share them with who ever is watching. Today I‘ve found a way to alter, and play with my digital photos, giving in, just a little, to the numerous possibilities.   After all, the chemicals in the darkroom smelled pretty toxic. Most of the photographs in this video where taken on the beautiful Garden Island of ...