scholarship application

My Photo scholarship 2010 entry

USA | Sunday, October 17, 2010 | flickr photos

I am a painter who in response to the decline of the economy, embraced and shared with a community of unselfish people. I wasn't selling enough work to satisfy my living expenses, and by happenstance was in a position to contribute to others in the same boat. We were all essentially poor, but rich with with resources and experience related to our respective crafts and specialties. I learned the true value of contributing to an unselfish community. This was a reward far greater than money. I realized that my life experience had no value unless I could share it with others and somehow benefit their life experience. This is an opportunity for me to experience and document my reaction to an unfamiliar land's rare wildlife and culture and share it with folks of my community and anyone else who is willing to share. In doing so I would hope to inspire others to share their responses to the world as I have been inspired from the contributions of others.

When I first visited Vietnam I immediately recognized the lack of apparent ego and need for attention among the people. The simplicity of the common lifestyles fascinates me. Vietnam is a very industrious country. It's the next booming economy in Asia. In my mind it is an industrious machine. The people, hardworking and humble, are the anonymous parts that make the machine work efficiently and effectively. Within the idea of Vietnam being efficiently mechanized by communities of hardworking people, there is a spiritual machine, as equally efficient and effective as the machine of industry. I spent quite a bit of time at a Buddhist orphanage and got to know some young monks in training. It seemed that at this orphanage, the monks learn and embrace virtues and the lifestyle of monk-dom by taking care of and mentoring the orphans, who are most often disabled (kids with disabilities are often left at the orphanage because most families cannot afford to take care of a child that cannot work and serve as an effective part of the machine.) Within the orphanage, the young monks, whom I expected to appear more anonymous, more rigid, and have less interest in satisfying personal curiosities, were vibrant with personality and very curious of my presence and my camera. Each of their personalities infected me when i expected not to distinguish between them. However, outside of the orphanage, the anonymity of the common working class people (most of the population) was more present than I expected. If you can work to feed your family and be with your family at the end of each day, then life is good. It is that simple. These ideas helped me put my life in perspective. I hope that by sharing these ideas with people in my community, they too can benefit.