Story of My Life

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I love working with photographer Christine Rucker for lots of reasons. First, she has a way of putting people at ease with her gentle, unassuming style and easy laugh. They get it right away that she sees them. I believe she possesses extra senses that ordinary people like me just don’t have.

Christine also gives me a gift every time she turns over a batch of photos for an audio slideshow project, because I get something beautiful to look at, deeply, as I’m editing.

This project, commissioned by Group Homes of Forsyth, Inc., an organization that runs group homes and programs for developmentally challenged adults, was no exception. FGH wanted to feature a few of its residents. Christine interviewed and photographed them, but the audio editing may have been my most challenging project to date. Christine was firm that she wanted them to speak for themselves, not through the voices of their assistants. The recording environments were tough — Christine wasn’t able to gather a lot of ambient sound — and some of the residents were more able than others to express themselves. But the group homes folks were happy, and I felt privileged to have spent time listening to the interviews and listening for the heart of their stories.

Christine assembled the audio slideshow.