Happy 2012! :-)

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Jan 1

This year was in many ways one of the most difficult years of my life. I will not miss 2011. It started very positive but shortly after nosedived into an abyss that I spent the rest of the year climbing out of.But while this year was emotionally so difficult it was also the year where I grew the most. Pain is the best teacher. It actually it is the only one. While having a fun time is very enjoyable it doesn’t give us any reason to change but pain does.At the end I am thankful for all that I was able to learn this year and hope my insights were deep enough that I don’t have to repeat my lessons. I am pretty don’t have to. As I said before pain is a good teacher but a lot of pain is an even better one! :-) Lessons learned.2012 will be an amazing year and there are already so many great things coming my way. It will be a year for another multimedia project. This time in collobaration with my friend and amazing Australian artist Tania Ferrier. “Talk Black USA” will be shown in 2013.Please stay tuned. In the new year I will be updating the blog more frequently and there will be “Talk Black USA” blog about the project and its progression.As the last image for this year I want to share a photograph of one of the people I love most in this world. Yesterday I shot an image of Coko, my friends Michael and Megan’s daughter for a new portrait project I call “Family and Friends”.To me children are our biggest teachers. We might have knowledge and physical power but children have something we have lost a long time ago. “Innocence”.I don’t believe in a particular religion but I love this quote from the bible:To Be a Child! - Matthew 18:2-4Jesus called a little child to come to him. Jesus stood the child before the followers. Then Jesus said, "I tell you the truth. You must change and become like little children {in your hearts}. If you don't do this, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. The greatest (most important) person in the kingdom of heaven is the person that makes himself humble like this child." So here we go. I spent this year 2011 in agony to become a little bit more like Coko again. My hope is that one day I will return to that state that we all lost so many years ago. That state of innocence, creativity and wonder that was destroyed by the experience we call “life” and that has closed the door on happiness (the kingdom of heaven) on us forever until we return to our original state.This is my New Years resolution. I want to become like a child again (in my heart) and I bow my head to my teacher Coko Rosker an (almost) five year old girl.