Documenting women’s lives around the world.
Worldwide, women and girls are creating crafts, celebrating festivals, and solving the problems that face women everywhere. In my photographic books, these women tell their inspiring stories in their own words. My hope is that readers will join them in changing the world.
I was inspired by news from the 1995 United Nations’ Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing: women worldwide were earning money to feed and educate their children. I thought: those women are heroes! They are changing our world and our future. I wanted to document their stories.
My first interviews were in Zalipie, Poland, artists who paint flowers on the inside and outside of their homes, their potato sheds, churches, even the town fire truck. They make vases and bowls to sell, all covered with painted flowers. There was no hotel, so for a week I slept in a bed in the grade school infirmary. On to Turkey. On to India. On to South Africa. This was not fancy travel: I paid for plane tickets with frequent flier miles.
After 34 years in business, little did I imagine that I was launching a second career that would lead to seven photographic books. That Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Walker would write the Foreword to my first book. That I would be on the Oprah Winfrey Show. That my photographs would be shown at the United Nations. That my books would be on best seller lists and would win awards.
My learning “curve” actually went straight up. I learned to work with interpreters. I built an international network of nonprofit organizations including the Global Fund for Women, which helped me find powerful stories.
I learned that women everywhere are resilient. They work hard to create better lives for their children. They want to be heard. By now, I’ve documented thousands of women’s lives in countries as far flung as the U.S., Kyrgyzstan and Tonga—63 countries in all, some on every continent.
The women I interviewed taught me to create an artistic, social, and economic legacy. I give 100% of my author royalties to nonprofit organizations working on the women’s issues in my books.
Readers follow suit, I discovered when I returned to a village in Gujarat, India and saw women rebuilding their homes after a devastating earthquake using money donated by a woman who had read one of my books. I watched the women build with tears in my eyes and with gratitude to my generous, invisible readers. I hope you are, or will soon be, among them.
Here’s a sampling of what critics are saying about her work:
“Too rich to stay on the coffee table.” — Washington Post
“Stunning photos and compelling text...Prepare to be inspired.” — National Writers’ Series
COOL: Women Leaders Reversing Global Warming
Women leaders are showing us the way to a livable planet. COOL is the first book to document the work of women climate leaders globally. They will inspire you with their intelligence, creativity, and courage. And each shares her ideas about how you can join her on her existential climate journey.
