Why is art supposed to move and inspire us? Art is found in ancient caves and under incredible security in multimillion dollar buildings in Paris, New York City, Florence and Rome and hundreds of other cities. How is it that we found some items to be particularly moving and important or of any value? Why do we need someone to tell us what art is suppose to be? Does saying something is priceless really make it priceless? Why do we favor one work of art by the same artist over another? Why does one medium thrill us and another bore us? I’ve seen the Mona Lisa, and I was not impressed; not with the painting itself, although other works of art have moved me more, but with the atmosphere of her location. Under this thick case, with soft lighting and a line in front of it that you cannot cross, all you can see is her smirk and sparkling eyes. Then you hear twelve different languages around you all trying to decipher what she is all about. As you make your way through the touristy crowd to get a better view, someone taller comes along and stands dead center in your view. Honestly, I’d rather stand in a cave looking at a simpler painting that is a thousand years old rendering an outline of a human form created by human hands.

I love art and I am completely fascinated by the known and unknown creators, the mediums they used to create and the history behind their pieces. Egyptian wigs, chairs and toys can be seen in the Metropolitan Museum in New York City and considered art because of the intricacies that embodies them. It is amazing when you start to think about the anonymous person who wove these tiny braids for a wig and the unrecognized painter who painted bright colors for toys. And then seeing Michelangelo’s David in Florence, I had no idea from photographs that this sculpture was more than life size and just as beautiful as you hoped it would be in person. So here, we have the unknown artists and Michelangelo. We all know Michelangelo to be an eccentric and incredibly talented in many ways, but does knowing this makes his work more inspiring to the human soul than an unknown? Why do we have a need to analyze art all the time rather than just letting it automatically overwhelm the spirit and bring us to an emotion we didn’t have before we saw the piece?

When I see something that makes me want to pick up my camera and photograph it, what motivated me to do so? Did something truly inspire me or did it all just “click”? I’ve never had the nerve to have a gallery show because I couldn’t bear the thought of being criticized, and most importantly I couldn’t stand to hear people say, “I wonder what on earth possessed her to take that image?” In all honesty, I really don’t know the answer to my question. For the most part, I just see something and feel the desire to pick up the camera and capture it. Perhaps I look where others may not, but that is just being observant. That “take a breath and stop moment” happens often than we think in our busy lives. Many people don’t just stop to smell the freaking roses and are missing out on moments that could inspire them in some way if, they just stopped to notice.

When I was walking around Paris on a very wet, dreary day, I saw the leaves just lying sporadically below my feet and could see the texture of their crackly, dry forms lying on a wet, cold surface next to a dark stone wall. The combination of textures and lights and darks and reflection were just fascinating. Honestly, I didn’t know how the photo would turn out but I had that ‘Ahh’ moment and knelt down and took a few photographs. I wasn’t looking for the moment, it just came upon me and I was able to just stop and let it inspire me.

As I look at the image that inspired me, I can remember the exact day and the mood I was in. I had feelings of loneliness and sadness with a sudden desire to hold the hand of almost anyone. I felt as if this sadness would go on forever, and that there was no one to see and understand what I was experiencing. Did my feelings set the mood which, inspired the image or did the image I see at the time, a photograph in my head, inspire my feelings?

Perhaps art exists so that we can be inspired to think and feel and question and know that there is no right answer. While we may not have the time to look for ourselves as to what can inspire us on a daily basis, thankfully, there are people who take the time to interpret and show us what should be seen and appreciated.

I think it is wonderful to travel around the world and fight crowds to discover art we hadn’t seen before, especially when the art itself was created in a quiet moment, in a quiet place, by a single person who found the vision to create. Maybe it is just like the inspiration to create a small piece of the human form by placing a hand on a wall and outlining the human touch.

Shortly after I moved to San Francisco eleven years ago, I got a job as a production assistant for a film crew that was heading to the Philippines. I was thrilled at the prospect of going there and I was very excited about seeing a true third world country. I had been to Mexico, but Acapulco was much too touristy to qualify. When you can decide on Italian, French or Steak House for dinner, it is not a third world experience. The Philippines are beautiful. Manila is hot and humid and way too many bugs. The rice fields are old Asia and just amazing, and so are the people. The beaches are absolutely breathtaking.

This photograph is one that I took near the ancient rice terraces in northern Philippines. I saw them and thought how endearing it was to see grandpa helping to take care of his grandson. I was stunned to hear that grandpa was 72 years old and the boy was actually his son. This tribe, lived in huts, walked around either naked or wrapped loosely in red cloth and lived off the land and the rice terraces. They are also a very small people. Averaging about 5’4” tops, I felt like a giant towering over them at 5”10”.

I was shocked when I saw the place where they lived and how they lived but I was just utterly astonished when I found this father and son. This was so completely different from the life I had experienced. Life here was simple. No televisions or phones and no home could be seen for miles. Life is what is truly appreciated and revered in their world. Of course, it helps when there is no money or goods to desire beyond something to eat or smoke.

I can look at this photo today and feel the heat and humidity, smell the fires burning and food cooking and remember laughing more than I had in a long time. These people were giving, caring, accepting and fun. Life is just simple and you accept what you have and make the most of it. Here is a man who isn’t concerned that he may not live to see his son grow old enough to marry. One night he got lucky and low and behold, he got lucky again with a son. End of story. There is no worry to make sure he brushes his teeth at night, no college fund, no X-Box or Game Boy and certainly no TV. It is about being a part of the community and doing your part to live a good life no matter your age.

I just had my 37^th birthday and I still have problems turning 37. OK, it has only been a week but it still sucks and the feelings are not waning. I’ll spend a lifetime hoping to be as happy as the Filipino tribal man and living as simply as he does but I live thousands of miles away in a world that is filled with concrete and steel and every tree has been planted with purpose, not by nature. I live in a world of credit cards, bills, gas stations, grocery stores and accountability for all of my actions. My tribe won’t take care of me when I’m sick or feed me when I’m hungry. Getting old is not fun in a privileged world or what we think is a privileged world.

We are all guilty of people watching and we all have been caught staring at some point or another. But I have learned to watch from afar with a camera and a long lens and really study my subjects. I can get up close and personal and no one is the wiser. I can watch, imagine and pretend I am a part of my subject’s life and they never know that for a short moment in time, their lives are impacting someone else. So completely unbeknownst to them, I have made them my muse.

While sitting in a Paris café, I saw a man sitting slightly ahead and below me. I could see over his shoulder and see his face perfectly when he looked toward the street. Had I been sitting in some typical American diner, my impression of him would have been much different. But I was in Paris on the Rue de Rivoli. I knew this guy had to be more refined than what the sideburns, wrinkles and basic black clothes would have said to me in America.

In America and my experience, he was a truck driver, a construction worker or a factory worker. However in Paris, France, on this shopper’s dream of a street, he had to be something else. The way he drank so specifically and with such purpose from a cup and saucer. The fact that he used cream but not sugar said to me that he was a man’s man in some strange “Misti” way of thinking.

I watched him for 20 minutes or so, just wondering how he lived his life. I had my camera at the ready as always. His face was interesting and I wanted an interesting moment. A moment to remember when I looked at my pictures back home in my little apartment in San Francisco; where, I would again try to imagine his life and remember my time in that café, in Paris, last fall, on a rainy afternoon, just watching time go by. Then he pulled out a cigarette.

The sky was dark and dreary and rain was ready to fall. Nevertheless, this man was sitting outside, doing what most Parisians love to do and we in foggy San Francisco just can’t. They enjoy sitting outside, drinking coffee and most likely smoking while watching the world go by as they pause for just one moment in their busy lives to reflect. Americans really need to learn this fabulous habit. We always seem to feel this need to move, to do, to be and to control.

It took him three tries to light his cigarette in the moist atmosphere that surrounded him. This gave me the opportunity to time taking his image at the perfect moment. I only wanted him, the light and the cup on the table in my frame and I only got two shots before his hands went down.

Looking at him in my photograph now I see how much more refined and less weathered his hands are compared to his face. I again wonder what he did for a living. I again wonder what or of whom he was thinking while sitting at that café. I am still wondering if he ever knew even subconsciously that for 20 minutes he was a part of my life and just never acknowledged it to me for his own reasons. Perhaps playing his own game with me.

I have numerous photographs of people I have seen for a split second in my travels around the world and I will never see again. I still look at these photographs and wonder about the people in them. I wonder if they completed what it was they were doing when I saw them. I wonder if their lives got better or worse after that moment they were in my life. I wonder if they ever do what I do which is to wonder about the lives of strangers and let them run wild in their imaginations.

I wonder.

Am I age obsessed? It’s highly likely. I don’t really think so but if you asked me and I really thought about it I guess I would have to admit that I am a little age obsessed. Now, what do I mean by age obsessed? I mean holding on to my youth through beauty regimens, time at the gym and holding on to notions and memories from the past. I am definitely guilty of all these things. If it comes in a tube, bottle or jar and an esthetician can do it, I’ve done it. I spend time running on the treadmill because my doctor says I have high blood pressure but honestly it’s because I want to stay a size six. However, with age comes wisdom and damn am I thankful for that.

This photo was taken of the lead singer for Erasure. They played recently in San Francisco and they sold out five nights at the Independent. Erasure? Really? Yes, Erasure. The Independent holds only about 300 people but they sold out and sold out quickly. I listened to Erasure when I was young. I’m proud to be a product of the 80′s, we had the best genre of music. It was the cusp of Punk and the beginning of New Wave and Alternative and songs spoke to your emotions which were likely to be about anger, not surfing, ala the Beach Boys. I couldn’t afford to see my favorite groups back then. First of all, I would have had to go to Detroit because no one played in the town where I’m from originally. Second of all, I was working three part time jobs to put myself through school, and back then minimum wage was $3.50. I make a little more now and I am clearly making up for lost time. In one week I saw Peter Murphy, Erasure and Lenny Kravitz. What is on my iPod? Well, everything from Al Green, Johnny Cash and Tom Jones to Audioslave, Coldplay and Flipsyde.

When I saw Erasure that night, of course I reminisced about the old days. I was astonished to see the men of my youth as middle-aged men singing the songs of 20 years ago. Seeing the wrinkles and the balding head makes you remember just how old you are. A real shocker though was when I saw the Sex Pistols. Talk about middle aged paunch but there they were, the Sex Pistols. I even got back stage on that one. Not what you think it is cracked up to be I assure you. The greatest thing about that show however was the two high school kids I met while standing in line waiting to get in. They had taken the train in from the suburbs and were dressed to the punk hilt. It was fabulous. Behind me were even more and mixed among them were people older than me who were balding or in need of covering up the gray roots. It made me feel young. I really, really like that. I didn’t get much of a childhood at all so this may be my way of living out my youth. I don’t care however because I’m having a lot of fun and I know this keeps me young at heart and I would rather laugh until it hurts than cry until I die.

Most people will guess that my age is somewhere between 25 and 28.  I love, love, love that. What I am most happy about though is that I’m not actually living in the past. It may not seem that way, but the last thing I want to do is to live in the past. It was not pleasant and the good memories are really few and far between. What I do is enjoy the past with a wider heart and a wiser mind. I’m not stuck in the past. I lectured at a high school photography school once and a week later saw three of the kids at a concert that included a lot of the current bands like The Killers. I was buying beer and they were making a poster. They thought I was totally cool and the best part of it was, I felt cool and I wasn’t even trying. If I were trying, I’d be living in the past.

It’s funny but in high school I so wanted to be accepted and a part of the cool crowd. I never fit in with anyone really. My friends were from the “outside” and many of them are still my friends to this day. Also, the friends that I have today are the greatest and most eclectic group of people. I adore them all and don’t need to prove a damn thing to any of them. My twenty-year high school reunion is coming up in two months and I know that I will be the cool crowd and after, I will walk away and not look back. Yes, I am youth obsessed and wouldn’t change it for a million dollars.

When I was young I innately knew that I had to leave my small hometown and go where there was noise, lights, life and people more like me. I spent hours thinking about far away places and how I would get there. My first stop was New York and I was just 18, naive and overwhelmed in numerous ways. Although I was incredibly intimidated I could not have loved it more. Today, with the passing of time and both myself and the City older, it is no longer intimidating to me. I miss the days of yesteryear.

Back in the days of the late 80’s and early 90’s the City never resembled the Disneyland that it does now. I hate it. No, I utterly abhor it. I loved not knowing what would happen and being on edge and knowing that something strange would happen walking through Times Square every time I walked through it. I wasted hours watching the street entertainers in Washington Square Park an how can anyone not miss the banter of two angry people telling each other to “Fuck off.” Walk through Alphabet City or Tompkins Square Park? No way.

Today the City has been tamed. Memories of a man chaining himself to a light pole with a dozen cops watching or a man digging through the garbage or the whispers of “smoke, sense, smoke” in a dimly lit street or being flashed by a man on the 6 train are all I have of the old days. Well, memories and hundreds of photographs. I used to hide my camera under my coat because back then you never knew what could happen. Yes, I really was flashed on a full 6 train and I wanted to say something like, “Are you really trying to impress me with that?” but those were the days that you never knew if you would be knifed or shot.

Today I walk around with my camera always at the ready and people actually stop to let me take a picture. Now, don’t get me wrong as I completely appreciate the courtesy. What a boring story! Now when I “see” a photograph, I don’t have to be sneaky and worry that my camera will be stolen. I just pick up the camera and take a picture. Therefor my photographs today compared to those from 15 years ago are much different and much more thought out and much more editorial than the documentary style I had back then. Then, they were just a moment in time. Today I can look, think, plan and see so much more into what I could do rather than flash and dash as I used to.

“Stopped” was taken in midtown during the day. I had nothing to do but my favorite thing— walk. I first saw the clocks and thought how fascinating and imagined people in Paris sharing cocktails in a bistro and people in China sleeping the night away. Then a guy came up to the corner and started drinking coffee. He added to the story of the people in NYC and what they were doing. At this point, I started to take some photographs and how exciting it was when the taxis drove by! It was as if I had stopped time around the world for just a moment. The man was frozen in time, the taxis were stopped dead in their tracks too and around the world, I had forced everyone and everything to just stop for a split second in time. Of course I’m the only one in on the secret but just as well as I’m the only one who matters in this scenario.

I love this photograph because it reminds of Henri Cartier-Bresson. I’ve always admired his work and how he looked for those precious moments in time. He was always ready with his camera and because of that we have his amazing photographs. I may not have been ready to take this photograph 15 years ago when I had to hide my camera. Because of the changes time presents, I was ready and able to see things in a new light. Maybe I don’t have all the crazy stories to tell anymore but I think my images tell their stories much better than they used to and now I can always be ready when they present themselves to me.

I do love the memories and days of old. As fast as time goes by and we wish we could hold on to certain moments, the passing of time cannot be stopped, even for me.