Happy first day of the year!

366 Days of Happiness

Day 1

How do you capture happiness, both visually and conceptually? Every day. For one year. How do you photograph it? What does it look like?

When you type “happiness” into Google images, you get a lot of smiley faces and laughing children, sunsets and flowers, and people jumping up for joy. These are the universal symbols signifying joy and happiness.

But happiness is very subjective. And that makes this project interesting. It’s not just about communicating a particular notion of happiness visually or verbally, but witnessing this notion filtered through someone’s consciousness, one point of view, one lens, one personal glimpse of what happiness means to us, what the world means to us. The challenge is to be honest and brave enough to share that personal vision.

But the biggest challenge of this project will be to keep it from becoming repetitive, cliché, and kitsch. The goal is to keep it meaningful, every day, and hopefully inspiring. That is quite the challenge. But a great one! It’s also very empowering – knowing that you can cultivate and share happiness just with a click of a camera.

Happy first day of the year!

 

Day 1 – My baby nephew likes to cuddle. He’s not quite two months old, but he’s growing and learning every day. He learned how to smile in response to someone smiling at him right around Christmas. He is not fully in control of his emotions yet, and cannot smile on demand (for the camera), but he can smile when he is happy. Usually when he is fed, and dry, and cuddling with someone. It’s so simple. So honest. So genuine.

Looking back over last year, I realized I had my heart broken every month, and sometimes more than once a month that year.  It could easily be written off as the worst year ever, but a lot of good things happened as well (book, travel, loving friends, supportive family). Spending quality time with my family and friends, and with my nephew, reminded me how simple happiness can be. No emotional manipulations and self-centered ego boosts, no race to score or win at the expense of someone else’s well-being, no power games, no shaming of others, no projections of one’s own fears and insecurities. Just love, support, understanding, comfort, smiles, and cuddles.

This is what happiness looks like today. Thank you, baby muffin!