Wednesday, April 19, 2017

4.1.17 The Remarkable Legacy of Nell Dorr


     I was describing photographer Nell Dorr to someone today. "At our girl's boarding school, we met her during fall picnics at her house.      She was an older woman then... 70's? Grey hair to her waist, she wore long dresses and beautiful capes and magnificently colored scarves around her head and neck. 
     She lived in an octagonal house, had two Irish Wolfhounds, and many doves that lived in cages built into her tall, deep living room windows . 
    Her home had been a golf course, so you would peer down past house and gardens ,to an enormous lawn, and a pond , with a row boat patiently waiting for someone. 
     When I met her, I was so transformed by her life and her photographs hanging in her home , that I wrote her a note, thanking her. Because somehow I knew she had shared this new, authentic way of being, and being honest and creative . Which turned out to be true. 
I ingested and inhaled the life I saw before me. 
     She wrote me back, sending me one of her books, beautifully inscribed. The book has traveled far and wide with me, and it is her photographs, with quotes, that meant much to her. Words and Pictures .
     I know she supported so many lives that followed in her wake, simply by being herself. 
     Who ever knows how we will be forever impacted by meeting another, or, unbeknownst to us ,impact others, as we quietly live our lives .

Photo: Nell Dorr



No comments:

Post a Comment