There is a moment when you can't, and then, a moment when you can. A gestalt. A falling down and getting up, until finally, you can stand, you can swim, you can ride a bike, drive a car, surf a wave, shoot a picture.

These pictures are a quiet celebration, an honoring, of ordinary people and places. The places overlooked or dismissed, where lives go unexamined. Folks are centered on living life, and often unaware of how remarkable common is.

Taking pictures, I endeavor to transform a way of seeing into a way of being.

Out of these ordinary people and places, I see emblems of our humanity. Rituals that bestow community on us. Individual complexity and the simplicity of our connections.

I hope to reveal the magical and profoundly democratic value of photography through the sharing of these images.

Photography makes me a citizen of humanity. Feeding the need to make a verifying, and terrifying, and healing, connection to the genuine.

Wherever I go, I find myself in the position of photographer.

Falling down and getting back up.

Rita Ann Cihlar Hermann
Groundhog Day 2008