My photo documentary of the Martial Arts is an ongoing project started in the fall of 2001. My interest is to document the personal experience within the training process: the trust between partners, a controlled ruthlessness in a martialist's eye, the omnipresent vigilance of a teacher during class...the pleasure of ukemi. Interesting minute events are recorded surreptitiously : the glow of a students energy field, the illusive shift between dimensions, a smile, a grimace, a moment of fear, a hug after class.

One of my favorite images cannot be published due to protection of the subject. A five year old in kids karate class is approaching a Little Bully plastic maniken to practice punching drills. Her tiny face is drawn into a cold contempt as she approaches the green dummy figure, her fists are poised to strike. When I showed this image to her female teacher, the Sensei said, " I had no idea X could look so serious!" To catch this shot I sat behind the bully maniken with the camera in my lap for a great deal of class until the kids were used to me sitting there. Then I pulled out the camera to catch the beginning of martial mindset…at age five.

I appreciate people letting me photograph in the sacred space of the dojo and in the sacred space of their training.Mainstream martial arts media tends to deny the presence of the spiritual, overlook the complexity of interactions between members of a dojo cohort, and of course, mostly depicts male participants. My interest in taking a new kind of image of martial arts started as a result of my graduate thesis work, an ethnography about women's martial arts culture in the U.S.

In closing, I offer this image. In the darkness of our Seeking, the budding trees reflect on the brilliant steel of the katana. I believe that through martial training, the student learns to negotiate and accept that "all loose and all die". Within this teaching, endurance and victory bless our lives with meaning, with graciousness.

March 20, 2002