My People: Introducing Golan

Meet Golan. She's one of our 11th graders. She's the one with kind eyes and the good nature.

Golan is a photographer.

When they started high school, I was the one with the camera. "Paparazzi" they called me. They protested and ducked at the glint of the lens, but not so much anymore, 3 years on.

They are all every one beautiful even if they don't believe me, in the spring almost summer of life. I want to capture the season for them, bottle their memories in film and preserve them for the day they will be gold.

I discovered Golan's work by chance while posting mine. She has something, is something I will never be. She's unobtrusive, inconspicuous, observing, has an eye for opportunity – innate qualities no less essential than expensive gear.

She has an eye for color and beauty in the ordinary and mundane details we mortals see and overlook.

She catches a pregnant moment, tells an entire story at shutter speed.

Golan is a photographer, but she has taken the leap from craft to art. She is able to translate what she sees into ideas, and to give ideas and feelings visual, almost tangible expression.

Like loneliness……….

……….and eternity.

Our11th graders went to Poland this last winter. I didn't go with them, but Golan says without words how it feels as a young modern Israeli to return to the shadow lands of the Holocaust.

She steps into the shoes of new arrivals on the platform in Auschwitz, and she, and you, experience just a shade of uncertainty and finality of the doomed.

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About a year ago I completed "kissing the mirror" and needed to give it visual expression. A cover. Golan agreed to help me. I outlined the idea and let her run with it.