From Lebanon to Lebanon

As a photographer, the better part of my job is less technical and more relational. Making people feel at ease is one of the greatest challenges a photographer faces when photographing people. As a matter of course I ask a few questions about where the client lives, where they're from originally, likes, hobbies, etc.

Over the years I've honed my list of questions, often giving me a quick insight to the client, allowing me to joke about things that might be common in their life. Things that are not too personal but just close enough to be disarming.

When I detect any kind of an accent, which my wife and children say I'm good at, I generally start down a mental list of questions that lead me to an understanding of the person before me. Within minutes I can generally find out where someone is from, where they're headed, and why they've chosen 'here' as their stopping place. Much can be learned from simply listening for an accent.

Normally, this quick banter leads to some smiles, a few laughs and hopefully some great photos. I love this part of what I do because I love people. As much as I love people and their stories though the greater percentage of the information I've gathered gets locked away in the deep vaults of my brain and rarely brought out again for deeper introspection. I've occasionally wondered if in my waning years when I begin to 'go vague', as my Nana used to say, those stories will arise as if from nowhere and completely confuse the nurses tending my bedpan.

Occasionally, though, a simple comment elicited by one of my questions touches some direct nerve in my soul and electrifies the deep spirit. All at once a word or sentence pulls back the veil and I discover I am locked in a prison of blessing and complacency. The awareness made real by the comments of a stranger, a person I'll likely never see again.

Today I'm photographing doctors for one of our clients. We've been on a campaign to photograph all 100+ doctors, on location with the same portable studio. We'll use the images for marketing and such so they all need to look somewhat identical. As one can imagine doctors are busy people who, generally speaking, don't enjoy having their photo taken. It's important for me to coax out that inner happy person that interacts with the patient. So, the list of questions comes out to help me gain just a bit of insight in the five or ten minutes we have together.

"Where did you do your residency?", or "What made you choose your specialty?", and "What brought you to Oregon?". All these roads lead somewhere that help ease the tension.

But, today, it was that last question that blindsided me. My client had a name that seemed to originate from the Middle-East. His accent told me he hadn't been in the states for a short time or possibly his parents spoke english regularly prior to arriving in the US. The accent wasn't deep but it was unmistakeably, an accent.

We worked through a list of softball questions, occasionally laughing at this or that, until I asked "What brought you to Oregon?". Simple enough. Hassan told me that it was war that brought him to Oregon from Lebanon. He didn't sugar coat it but he didn't say it as if I had insulted him either - just a matter of fact. He grinned and said "I didn't want my kids growing up in a war", then joked that he chose Oregon so he could still be close to 'Lebanon', even if it was Lebanon, Oregon.

War. I don't want my kids to grow up in the midst of war. There I was, instantly transported to my aforementioned inner prison of complacency. I wanted to ask so many more questions, dig deeper - father to father, man to man about the days, and months leading up to his decision to leave everything and, like our pioneering forfathers, find that elusive 'better place'. But, I had set my own trap. I lead us down a path of easy conversation only to find us teetering on the edge of an abyss.

After the photos were done and Hassan was on his way I gethered my thoughts. Life, for us anyway, is so much easier. Please don't take this as some public television appeal to your environmental conciosness theat occurs at the last ten minutes of every nature show. I'm not trying to lead you to a place of some repentance for an ill you didn't know you had committed. It's not that at all.

But, I would appeal to what I'm affraid we allowed to atrophy in our society; the sense of basic understanding that most of us have it pretty damned good. I spend nights awake wondering how I can afford that new computer or find time to get my children involved in something that will allow them to bloom in the fertile soil of this peaceful and contented life we lead. All the while ignoring the reality that exists beyond our borders; that war, famine and corruption viciously shreds the hopes and potential futures of people just as deserving as any one of us.

The argument can be made that we all have a choice to leave that which holds us, find a new future - chart a new course. But do we, really? Or is it because we live in the richest nation in the world that we flippantly belive our freedom exists throughout the lands?

Today, I met a man that looked into the abyss with me, and shrugged off the uncomfortable silence with a look of, "I bet you didn't expect that for an answer did you?". Unfortunately, I think he was able to shrug it off because here, in the land of plenty, he's probably quite used to the blank stares of complacent people like me who have no idea the deplth of what he's been through.