Inside - transitions.

I've always been really attracted to organizations that help those help themselves. If, as a photographer, I could spread the word of these organizations that reward hard work with the potential to grow from more hard work in some capacity, I think I can feel satisfied. It all fits under the whole "sustainable" umbrella that's trendy these days. In vogue or not, I feel it's important. Besides the environment, people need to look at things through a long term economy. Band-aids all fall off eventually.

The Bryan House will house refugees who have already established themselves as productive stateside, and rewards them with the chance to buy a home. Still pretty much being worked on, the refugees that live here will have their rent invested
over the course of the year, and returned to them at the end for the chance to put money down on a house. The benefits of homeownership in a community are undeniable. It's healthy both for the individual families and for the community itself.

I'm still in the beginning of this project, as the house is really still under construction, but every time I am home for the next year (or more), I will be checking in. I also am fortunate to be able to make this project myself and for the folks that organized the Bryan
House. I get to piece the project together on my terms and will be looking at it as such, so it may not turn out looking quite like a photo story at the end, which I am quite excited about.

So far the Bryan House is a bit of an abstraction, it's a place of hope and tolerance but also a place that needs some work. I expect the full vision to be realized very soon, however. Really exciting. It's a place where that "American Dream" has the potential to be realized.
The people behind (Rick and Desiree Guzman) it are some of the most driven and sincere people I have met and I truly hope this project has boundless success....I also think that their model is quite original (I haven't, nor have other folks I've met, heard of such an opportunity for refugees) and have hopes that once Bryan House has more concrete successes to speak of that this model will be considered and adopted elsewhere. It's truly a model of sustainability, progress, tolerance and reward to those who work for it.
The speed and magnitude of their fundraising to get the project off the ground was a very inspiring start.

Complicating things when I was shooting some interiors / volunteer work yesterday was the unfortunate malfunction of my wide angle lens on the Hasselblad. I am hoping to shoot this project entirely on MF film, but with this lens out for 4-6 weeks and a possible shoot or 2 coming up this week, I may have no other choice to go back to digital. Breaks my heart.

Also, thanks for comments on the website. Thanks to my brother and some tinkering around I hope to have a solution that both satisfies my vision of tasteful presentation and everyone else's ease of navigation. But it won't make everyone happy. So be it.