A group of five of my images from my Flashes of Hope project is on display at the CBS Auditorium at the University of the Arts until February 5.  The exhibit is the annual Focus | Philadelphia curated show from the American Society of Media Photographers.

Flashes of Hope is a great organization that provides free portrait sittings and prints to children and families fighting cancer or another life threatening illness. The non-profit was founded by Allison and her husband Kip during their son’s successful treatment for cancer. FOH’s mission is, and I couldn’t say it any better so I won’t get in their way…”For families of terminally ill children, it’s especially important to have a portrait that preserves forever the beauty, grace and dignity of their child.”

One thing that I noticed after a few shoots was the sense of pride, strength and determination that came through the kids in the pictures. It gave me even more motivation to make these pictures more than just a simple likeness and try to dig deeper to reveal a significant aspect of their personality that said something about this moment in their life. Not to get too hokey about it but I look at a wedding much in the same way. I try to do more than just simply capture how you look but try to capture those fleeting moments that reveal how you feel at this moment in your life. That’s what photojournalism and documentary photography is really all about. Capturing some true essence of emotion and the moments that reflect that in our lives. There was a discussion on a photographer’s forum recently about what makes an image photojournalistic. Here’s my response….

“It’s also about the story being told. It’s not always about one certain kind of image. Sometimes a very tight frame is pure photojournalism at a high level. Wide lenses do not equal photojournalism. it’s a motley stew of authenticity, moment, story, context, aesthetic power, vision, connection, etc. There is no one magic element, lens, camera, angle, subject, light, etc. that makes a picture photojournalistic. It’s all of it brought together into one rolling force of subjective truth.”

Here are the five images in the show. If you can’t stop by to seem them in person.