Lydia

A lovely creative portraiture session with Lydia at the Sandy River Delta in Portland, Oregon.

I am practicing with more long-form storytelling. Not only the moments where the plot is at its peak but the moments anteceding it. Glimpses into a whole narrative give us so much more. Do you agree? Lydia is a chef, designer, and all-around sensualist. I admire her for inviting art into her daily being, whether through cooking, sewing, decorating, or thrift store hunting. This day, I met her at her apartment, which she is perpetually rearranging with odds and ends she finds in thrift shops, in nature, and even on the street. She had just returned from her weekly two-hour drive to pick up raw milk from a farmer in Scappoose and shared some with me in a tall cold glass. We went through her closet, picking out clothes that complimented the chosen destination and a theme I had in mind that sounded more like a song played on a piano than words I could write to you right now. I suppose it sounded like freedom. The Mara Hoffman dress was a little too big on her slight frame, so she pulled out a thread and a needle and sinched it right up—a lost art.

We drove the thirty minutes to Troutdale and meandered out to the cold, expansive valley of the river bottom. Two snakes slithered by as she used the forest as a dressing room. Off-leash dogs were perplexed by a dancing woman in a peach dress. In the last grasps of winter, the temperatures dipped to forty degrees, and the sun surprised us in the last moments casting its heavenly golden light.

I highly recommend conjoining the photographs with the audio below by pianist and composer Hania Rani.