Portrait of Mildred the Wise, 2010

Portrait of Mildred the Wise, photographed by Shannon Finney, Washington, DC June 2010

Portraits have the ability to tell the truth about their subject and about their author. I met Mildred's daughter by happenstance and as she told me about Mildred, about her long vibrant life filled with hard work and family, I wanted the chance and the challenge of telling a bit of her story. At the time of our sitting, Mildred was in the advanced stages of vision loss and her verbal ability was limited to low moans. But her body remained strong, and etched in her face were the traces of her youthful self.