Almost two years ago, my friends Rebecca Zeller, Meaghan Curry and I were longing to start a collaboration in the form of a personal project that would push us to shoot more of what we loved, in the way we loved, throughout the year. Once we figured out exactly what we wanted it to be we put together our dream list of friends/peers (starting with one of my best friends, Kati Dimoff) that we wanted to join in with us. To our surprise and delight, every single one of them said yes. The whole project came to be in a mere matter of weeks, and before we knew it, Tuesday (the day we posted our collection of weekly images) became our favorite day of the week. We called it, You Are My Wild.
Each week our pictures came together from different parts of the country (and world) to share the same space, one after another. We were often shocked at our similarities, and patterns… the connections we seemed to form without trying. We documented life and birth, and loss and illness, and happiness and stillness, and everything in between — all through our portraits of our children. And behind the pictures everyone could see out in public, we were forming deep friendships and connections of our own. Except for one thing — most of us had never actually met.
So we planned to meet, in the west Texas town of Marfa, where Brooke Schwab has a family home. And we wanted the children to meet because we already knew we loved them all. And our husbands (and wife) might have thought we were crazy, and to tell you the truth my kids kind of did, too, but we were excited for the adventure.
Marfa was beautiful, and open, and light-filled, and just the space we needed to swim and play and eat and drink and just be together. It was perfect. Of course life and babies, and new jobs, and money got in the way and not everyone was able to attend, but I am pretty sure all who could (Becky, Meaghan, Brooke, Anje, and I) will never forget it, and those who couldn’t (Dera, Ryan, Shelby, Kati, Tara, Jessica, Isabel, Klo, Rebecca) were sorely missed.
As you can tell from these photos, instant friendships were made. Laughing was constant, hair was styled, and I’m not sure my kids were ever in their own clothes. It was only 5 days out of our summer, but when my little first grader brought home her first week’s school work, her “What I did this summer” said one thing: “I went to Marfa Texsas with my frends.” And we did.