In January 2005, my wife died in a Los Angeles hospital called Queen of Angels. I was forty-four years old, and the world stopped making sense.
The day after she passed away, I picked up a camera and drove into the desert. I didn’t know what I was looking for. I drove all the way to Joshua Tree National Park, climbed up on Skull Rock, and sat there for right hours.
After that, I hiked national parks first, all that silence and ancient rock, a place where grief could stretch out and breathe. Then the renaissance festivals, with their noise and color and cheerful absurdity. And then, through a door I hadn’t known existed, the belly dance community, a world of dancers and drummers and misfits who welcomed me without asking what I was running from.
What started as survival became something else entirely. Over eight years, I photographed nearly a million images. Tribal fusion dancers in Los Angeles studios. Jousters at fairgrounds across the country. Mermaids in tanks. Professional wrestlers from the second row. Historical reenactors fighting wars that ended a century ago. I threw annual birthday parties where dozens of dancers performed just because I asked. I drove to the Grand Canyon to photograph a friend in forty-degree weather. I became part of something I never expected to find.
I went on four belly dance cruises, invited as the photographer for 150 dancers. The first time, I asked a friend to come. She pointed out we’d be sleeping in the same room and asked about my intentions. I told her I just needed a roommate. The next year she’d married her boyfriend and said going would be inappropriate. She couldn’t find another roommate, so she asked her husband. He said, go with Richard, he’s cool. We went on all four together.
This is the story of those eight years, told through the events and the people and the photographs that brought me back to life. It’s about grief and healing, yes, but it’s also about community, adventure, and the strange magic that happens when you point a camera at people who love what they do.
The memories don’t come in order. They never do. So neither will these chapters.
New chapters appear several times a week. Click any title below to jump directly to that chapter. Once you’re reading, use the Next and Previous buttons to move between chapters, or hit the Index button at the bottom of any chapter to return to this page. Most chapters include links to the original photo albums and videos from that event, so you can see the images and footage behind the stories.