About the Project

PAULINA ALDABA      Equal Rights Activist      [link] featured on ABC's Good Morning America

A couple of years ago...

...I was in a conversation with an award-winning (Emmy/Tony) actor.  Through her many different roles, she has been brilliantly convincing as different people.  Despite this brilliance, I found myself in greater awe of the person off stage.  Sincere humanitarian efforts.  Profound personal insights.  I wanted to record her portrait, but also I wanted to record some spark of what brought her to the person she is today.

Since that conversation I devised a mode of presentation that delivers both the present and the past.  One photograph documents a likeness.  One photograph records an object from that person's past - selected by that person.  Both photographs are similar in construct but focus the viewer's attention differently.

Participants are asked to select objects that they decide are valuable.  The definition of ‘valuable’ is to be decided by them.  While it can be any object of their choosing, there is one stipulation; the One Valued Object must be hand held. Many objects have worked quite well: a childhood whittling knife, a hand-written letter, a gift uniquely made by a global sporting goods company.  In each case I have placed focused attention on the person in the first frame, and in the second frame I have focused my lens on the One Valued Object.

Ivar van Bekkem and Esther Polak    Artists / Conceptual Cartographers (Wittman's term)    [link] career website

Maiken Scott      Host of National Public Radio's "The Pulse."    [link] WHYY's Newsworks site