Following Matt’s lead, I’ve collected a few of my favorite photos of mine from 2009. It was a relatively good year, with a few assignments, corporate shoots, other gigs, and an award and exhibition or two. Always room for improvement in that respect, and 2010 seems to be off in full swing. The work here is mostly from China, with a little bit from the northwestern United States thrown in. These aren’t necessarily the best photos I took, or representative of everything I photographed, but they’re favorites nonetheless for various reasons.

Four of my images (above) from the series Young and Abandoned, portraits of orphans on the verge of institutionalization in rural Jiangsu Province, China, will be included in an exhibition at Fe艺术iv’Art (Feztiv Art) in Shanghai, China, from January 22-26th, 2010. There is an opening on January 22 at 6:30 pm. I’ll be there.

The festival was created by the Artdidact, the Artistic Commission of the French Junior Chamber International of Shanghai, whose aim is “to take part and contribute to the progress of the global community by giving to the young the opportunity to develop their leadership skills, their social responsibility and the necessary solidarity for taking actions to produce positive changes. Members of the JCI identify and realize projects to serve the positive evolution of their city in all fields: arts, social, economics, cultural, community…”

The subject of the exhibition is “China Youth,” and the pictures will be on display at Art + Shanghai Gallery at Fumin Lu, Lane 22, House 2, (Near Yanan Lu). Phone: +86-21 6248 4388. In the off-chance that someone in Shanghai is reading this, I hope to see you there.

I am back in New York City after five long and memorable days in Washington DC (and the road down) for the Obama inauguration. Both then and ever more now in retrospect, I am so happy I had the chance to be there to see this in person, and to be able to make pictures that will remain in my archive forever. There was much that was set-up, scripted and predictable about this event but there were many more genuine people and moments. I was struck by so many little things over the week that really, if I can try to be unsentimental about it, made me realize the true profound nature of this moment in American history. As I said the other day, this is really a big part of why I take pictures … to document, live and interpret the big events of my day for posterity.

I wasn’t the only one with this aim, of course, and I have been enjoying seeing other peoples’ work from DC. Hopefully my work can contribute to the collective memory of this day. To that end, here is a large selection of pictures from Inauguration Eve. Mostly they’re quiet moments, away from ‘the pictures’ of the day. I think this edit, and the ones coming immediately after this here on Dva featuring my work from Inauguration Day, embodies my feelings and perspective on the event, and hopefully it says it without words.