In honor of my birthday – today – I had a blog post all planned out in my head. I was going to scan photos I’d found while looking through photobooks with Ashley on her first day in town, and write about discovering something that must have been there all along.

And then I forgot the photos when we left Orange County.

Ah well. Typical Leah. Some things never change, no matter how much older I get. I’ll scan them in one day, and I’ll write about all that some time. But in a way I’m glad I forgot, because it gives me the opportunity to write about something else that means even more to me.

As a little girl, long before I ever imagined picking up a camera, I used to look through a book. The book had a profound impact on me in so many ways. It was called The Family of Man and was the book version of the exhibition curated by Edward Steichen. The exhibition was first shown in 1955, which gives you an idea of the age of the photos; most of them were taken at least two decades before I was born. Yet there they were, these people, these men and women and children, from around the world, scattered across the pages, loving and fighting and eating and sleeping and working and living and being. They became a part of me, not just as images, but as the exhibition intended them to be: as a world of different people who are all at heart part of one family.

If you follow me on flickr, and most of you who read this blog do, you know I take great inspiration from the people in my life. Whether or not they are actually in my life, they are to me a part of it, inspiring and teaching and pushing me on. More often than not I still feel like the little girl reading The Family of Man: agog at the world and all it has to offer, amazed at the possibilities and astonished that such things are possible, impatient to learn everything there is. I wonder if I’ll ever outgrow the feeling of wonder at the world, of being wide-open to experience, of being ridiculous and silly and terrified and unafraid, of reaching out to those people in that family of man.

Sometimes the inspiration is too much. When you look out at that many people, it’s not simply that all the eyes are staring back. Gazing into all those eyes means that many windows into that many souls.

Or, as the case may be, reflecting as windows often do back onto ourselves.

I have done a lot of reflecting on the self this past year. In this next year, I am sure that will continue, but I am ready as well to reflect out: I want to contribute to the family. With my work. Maybe make a multitude.

And make images that hopefully help someone stop and feel the way I did, all those years ago. To see the people I see and to want to be a part of this great family of ours.

The next Family of Man. Woman. Human.

Thank you all for the most wonderful birthday.

xoxox

PS – I’m a big dork. But it’s part of my charm.