In the fall of 1974, I was a college student taking a semester abroad in Spain. Although I was not focused on history or politics, my 19-year old self understood an era was ending. Franco, who had been synonymous with the idea of Spain for 45 years, was ill and dying. As I wandered around the country with my camera, I found myself drawn to a particular kind of citizen: the elders. These people had lived what for me was an unimaginable experience of wars and transitions: not only World Wars I & II, but the Spanish Civil War, a bloody revolution whose victor, a fascist dictator, was still in power almost half a century later.

I worked intuitively and responsively on what would become my first big photographic project. I travelled around the countryside with my 35mm Nikon camera. I knew so little about what I was embarking on. My eyes did all the work. I shot 30 rolls of film, selected an essay’s worth of prints, and defined a passion. For the next 50 years, I continued to relate to the world around me as a photographer.

50 years later, I am revisiting these images with new/old eyes, from the other side of a long life of making images that has profoundly affected me. Visual instincts of youth can now be invested with the wisdom of a lifetime spent behind the camera. A half a century immersed in photographic practice allows me to see in these portraits a depth and compassion that I don’t recall being conscious of back then as I was working. What I had in 1974 was intuition, feeling. Something unarticulated was there yet I knew. What I have now—-expertise, craft, deep knowledge of how images work and make meaning— allows me to see in these 30 rolls of film something familiar and recognizable. The work I do today is consistent with this work I did so long ago.

I have chosen over 60 images that speak to me with a depth and expansiveness which I didn’t fully recognize in my youth. I have no idea about each of their particular stories. There was no way of knowing them with my fragmentary Spanish but they gaze at the camera of a very young person with an ease that I am still fascinated by. There is no pretense. They seem so relaxed as they watch this young photographer, with no language to explain herself, take their portrait. No hesitation. No apparent concern. They lived in villages and rural areas and life was hard. Yet I don’t see distress. At least with those people I chose to make my subjects.

I wonder about their stories, their names, but since I did not collect this kind of information, I am left with only images, my images, a story made out of my instinctive impression of person and place. I do not know their life stories, but I know mine.

And after having lived and worked for 50 years since I took these images, it is clear to me that the fashion work, dog work and all the work I have done since, has a common thread: to not observe but to see, really see. I call it ‘recognition of the other’. I didn’t learn this. I sought it out soulfully—wordlessly. Without a conscious articulated thought process, or recipe of any kind. Today through my continued soul bravery and living a life that challenged fears, I have a much more articulated voice that opens up my ability to understand my vision.

Earlier in my life I had few words. I had only my camera, my instinct. That is joined now with a life dedicated to ‘recognition of the other’.