I was born in Quincy, Massachusetts in 1965, on Boston’s South Shore. I grew up in nearby Hanover. I became enamored with photography in the 1970s when my aunt Marie gave me a Kodak Instatmatic that shot 110 film. In high school, my parents bought me my first SLR, a Pentax K-1000 which I incessantly pointed at my three sisters, causing two of them to run for the hills, the camera for them being akin to garlic for vampires. While studying psychology at Boston College I took elective photography classes, shooting with a Canon T-90. In 1991, I moved to Oakland, California, once the stomping grounds of Imogen Cunningham and current location of the Oakland Museum of California, home to Dorothea Lange’s non-public-domain photography collection. I enrolled in City College of San Francisco’s photography program, which boasted a stellar professional faculty with affordable tuition (then $17 per credit for California residents). In the 1990’s I was introduced to Henri Nouwen (b. 1932), a Dutch priest and best selling author who asked me to make portraits of him for use in his books and publications. When Henri died suddenly in 1996, there was a sudden demand for my portraits as publishing houses rushed to re-issue Henri’s many books and new biographies emerged. In 2019, I donated my color transparencies and black & white negatives to the Henri J.M. Nouwen Archives and Research Collection, located at the University of St. Michael's, Toronto, Canada. Iconic Lange is a favorite, but I love portrait photography so I have great admiration for the likes of Dominique Issermann, Peter Lindbergh and Richard Avedon. Have you seen the documentary Finding Vivian Maier? Her too! I currently shoot with a Canon EOS 70D digital SLR (and my iPhone!) I live in Pinole, California with my husband and favorite Uruguayan Alvaro Carrasco, who has patiently endured countless portrait sittings since 1991, when we met.