The photography series “Being Seen” consists of chlorophyll prints scanned, enlarged, and cropped.

Appropriated images are from the US Library of Congress, many of them drawn from the Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War portraits. Walt Whitman, in his poem “Faces,” wrote:

These faces bear testimony slumbering or awake,
They show their descent from the Master himself.

Off the word I have spoken I except not one . . . . red
      white or black, all are deific,
In each house is the ovum . . . . it comes forth after a
      thousand years.

Spots or cracks at the windows do not disturb me,
Tall and sufficient stand behind and make signs to me;
I read the promise and patiently wait.

A series of six Being Seen works received a Portfolio Award from a panel of six distinguished jurors during the San Francisco Bay Area International Photography Awards judging prior to the Bay Area month of photography in September 2020. In addition, one of the works, “Young Union Soldier (R.I.) in a Nasturtium Leaf,” received Gold Medal recognition. That work also received a Merit Award when it appeared in the “2020 Photography Show” at SPACe Gallery in La Veta, Colorado. Another work from the Being Seen series, “Young African-American Union Soldier in a Nasturtium Leaf,” received the Juror’s Prize and Director’s Honorable Mention when it appeared in the “Portrait 2020” exhibition at the Center for Fine Art Photography, Fort Collins, Colorado.