This month features an extraordinary woman and dear friend -- photographer Marjorie Salvaterra -- whose evocative images explore the various roles women take on and the raw essence of their inner struggles and inherent beauty. Read our interview below to learn about Marjorie's first book HER: Meditations on Being Female and her insights on what makes creative work resonate with others.

Marjorie Salvaterra's images reveal “a fine line between sanity and insanity,” according to Virginia Heckart, Associate Curator of Photography at The Getty Center. Her work was included in the George Eastman House Museum auction at Sotheby's, New York and she was runner-up for the 2009 and 2010 Berenice Abbott Prize for Emerging Photographers. Marjorie's great achievement is as a wife and mother of two. She makes her home in Los Angeles.

In her stunning collection of photographs, HER: Meditations on Being Female, she explores and challenges the depiction of women's experiences as daughters, mothers, partners, and agents of their own destinies.

Karin: What was your way in to photography?

Marjorie: Well, I took a few classes in high school and I loved it. But in my head, I already had a plan for my life, so I stuck with that. Then my husband Chris was shooting a movie in Morocco, and I was terrified to go but I ended up going. And I started shooting. Somebody had given us a camera for our wedding, and I just fell in love with it. Just walking around, creating these beautiful images.

What was hard was getting home and going, “Oh god, it's so easy to see with new eyes but it's much harder to see with old eyes. What am I supposed to shoot here?” In Morocco it was so easy, everything was new. It was really about finding my voice. Like, what is my voice? What am I trying to say with my work? It was a process.

What did you discover?

If you're a storyteller or a photographer, have a story you want to tell. The more my stories got personal, the more interesting and unique my work got

HER: Meditations on Being Female by Marjorie Salvaterra — *HER: Meditations on Being Female* by Marjorie Salvaterra

Can you give an example?

So life was changing up a bit for us... I was a new mom in school and life and health and all this new stuff, and I was just sort of beside myself. What am I doing? I didn't feel like I was doing well by anybody. I was trying to balance being all things to all people. I felt like I was always trying to keep up with everybody around me. I felt like everybody else was doing it better. You know, the moms at school: they looked fancy, I looked crazy.

All of a sudden I just had this idea of the women in water. It was my very first shot, 'The Weight of Water' from my HER series. The idea that “one drop of water” was an analogy. The idea of one drop of water throwing off your whole day, basically letting outside forces take over. So I just had that idea for that image. And I thought, “Oh god, how am I going to do that? Get all these women in the water in gowns?” So I just started piecing it together. Buying gowns on eBay, going to used clothing stores. Luckily enough I got enough crazy women to show up and stand in the water in the middle of February.

And from there, started a whole series, and really, what I wanted to do with my work; be personal with it.

I think it's the same with writing. Take from your own life. Chris and I watch TV shows. We always go, “Oh my god, that had to come from somebody's life, it just had to.” Because it feels so real and so funny. And also being able to make analogies, too. You don't have to tell specifically what happened in your life, but to make it real enough, to make an analogy, to hopefully do it realistically.

I also think that the more we're open--the more we give of ourselves--the more people relate. When I was writing, people would say, you have something you can't teach. And I think it's just about being open and emotionally giving of your own craziness. Because I think that's what we respond to in each other; like, “Oh I can relate to this person.” So that's what I try to do with the work.

Is that something you had to cultivate or are you naturally open?

Yeah, probably way too open. Like in my book, I wrote about my gray pubic hairs.

What were some of the themes that you explored in the HER series?

Definitely age and gender; growing old and holding on too tightly to things; motherhood; being all things to all people, all the roles we take on as women. I don't know if you have it, but the guilt as a mother, trying to do it all right. Giving your kids everything they need and still being able to take care of yourself.

As we age, everything changes. It's holding on to our youth, holding on to this idea of beauty, holding on to this ideal of keeping up with other people. Trying to accept changes, trying to accept our roles. And that we can't do everything and we can't be everything.

I get to take out all my frustrations in my work.

I think it's sort of therapeutic where I just take images in my life, every situation, and turn it into art. Instead of letting it get to you, turn it into art and let it go. That makes me feel better.

To learn more about Marjorie, visit marjoriesalvaterra.com

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This month I had the opportunity to chat with Ann Randolph, an award-winning solo performer, about her approach to helping writers explore their personal stories by getting out of the head and into the body. She will be performing her show Loveland in Washington, DC starting March 18th for a five-week run, so spread the word to your friends and family who are out that way. Also, if you're interested in working with Ann, she has a couple upcoming workshops at Esalen and in Kauai!

Ann Randolph is an award-winning writer, performer, and educator. Her Off-Broadway hit, Squeezebox, was produced by Mel Brooks, and her current show, Loveland, received Best Solo Show awards in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Her personal essays have aired on NPR, BBC, and the Moth. She teaches and tours at Esalen, Kripalu and theaters throughout the country.

Karin: Tell me about your writing workshops. What is your approach to working with writers and to developing their personal stories?

Ann: Well, they're different than normal writing workshops, I can tell you that! Because we're moving for a little bit of time every day. We're on our feet and we're improvising. And most of the people who come to my workshops are not performers or actors. It's not intended for that. They're writers who are in their head, and I want them in their body. Because when they drop into their body, then these stories kind of come at them by surprise. Or something that's very deep doesn't have time to hide out when you're improvising. It's incredible to watch.

How do you connect the 'physical movement' with the actual 'writing on the page'?

We'll do some improvs, and then I'll give a writing prompt. But a lot of times I'll ask, “What was triggered in the improv? Was there a line that was triggered in the improv?” Stuff moves the minute you move your body, and when they go to write, they've already been out of their head. Not that that inner critic doesn't come up when you're improvising, even in a group, but there's a lot more freedom, so there's a loosening. And when they go to write, they usually share that it was effortless, it just wrote itself.

To me it's about finding the emotional charge in the body. Where do you feel turned up or great passion or great loss? Or there's a lump in the throat. For me, it's like crying, where's your sadness? And then writing about that even though I'm writing comedy. I mean, there's a lot of pathos in there, it's a lot of sadness. So just allowing, giving permission for all those feelings. And setting that early on in the class, permission to speak about anything, or say anything, or have any feeling, and holding space for that.

What is the goal in your workshops? Is there a specific place you're looking to land, or a particular take-away, by the end?

In the workshop we are not going towards a goal, but discoveries. I've worked with too many students that try to push a structure before it's ready, and it just collapses. So what I think they walk away with is, “Okay, here are ways that I can drive the narrative.” They can walk away with, “How can I use my body to tap into story, how can I use my body to write on my feet?” Creating dialogue on your feet is much better than being in front of a computer. If I'm going to do my mother, I'm going to walk around as my mother and be her. And the dialogue will come much more easily. Just ways to create spontaneously without this huge mind saying to you “arrrgghh.”

I know you're on your way to Washington, DC to perform Loveland, your fifth solo show. Can you describe what it's about?

Just imagine sitting next to an oddball, misfit on an airplane who is totally inappropriate, with no impulse control, acting out, and you have to go the whole duration of the ride with her. Loveland is about this character, Frannie Potts, who is unable to deal with her mother's death, and she's going back on this plane to go to the funeral, and she comes undone in the middle of the flight. And as we're going cross-country, there are several flashback scenes so you understand the relationship between her and her mother.

Can you share a bit about the creative process of bringing Loveland to life?

Well, this is what was really interesting. It came out rather quickly, and then I shelved it. I mean, the idea came out, and then I thought, “No this is a short story... no this is a novel... no this is a screenplay.” And because it wasn't coming out any way that I was used to - I'd written five solo shows - I thought, “Okay, I'm going to put this away, because I don't know how to do it. It's not telling me what it is.” And now I've learned, it doesn't matter... let it come out in all forms. I always tell my students, “Let it come out in every form in the first draft.” Maybe one page is a song, and then it switches over to a novel, to whatever.

Finally, in a writing workshop at Esalen, I was taking a poetry workshop with Ellen Bass. Something possessed me to take it out again and do it. It was in her writing workshop that said, “Okay Ann, you cannot not do this.” And I went back to it. And I got up to 30 minutes of it, and it was kicking ass. So I performed it around town at 30 minutes. I did not know what my ending was at all, but I knew the first 30 minutes was working. And then finally the ending made its way to me.

What was the biggest challenge along the way?

It was going from writer to performer. When I was in previews in San Francisco, I had students and others not even be able to look at me after the show. I had one student who had no impulse control say, “It was so cool to see my teacher fail. I learned from watching my teacher fail.” So night after night in previews I sucked, because I was still in writer mode. I couldn't switch, I was still not living it. I mean - that's why you have previews. So the shame was tremendous. And thank God for the director. The director said, “The writing is there, you just haven't landed it in your body.” I'm stealing a line from Heather Woodbury, who says, “My suck level gets less and less.” And each night, my suck level got less and less. And then Tavis Smiley has a book out called “Fail Up.” Another thing, I literally failed up, every night, until by the time the show opened, I was kicking ass. But I wanted to go back to re-writing the whole thing until after the first few nights of previews. And that's why it's so important to have an editor or a director or somebody who can say, “No, it is there, you just haven't landed yet.” It's horrible to bomb in front of people, and know you're going to do it, because you don't have the chops yet. I didn't have the chops yet.

You mentioned that you're going to do a writing workshop with the audience after each performance in DC, and that this component has evolved with the show. How did that come about?

What happened was, when I was doing the show in San Francisco people would wait in the lobby to tell me their own stories - something about the character Frannie Potts, which is the lead character, is so outrageous and over the top and so “tell-it-like-it-is” regarding grief and loss. The way she deals with loss is inappropriate, like acting out anger toward other passengers, but also sees sexual fantasies and masturbates and what-not while she's trying to meditate, all sorts of things. And something about that raw honesty brings people to wait in the lobby and then tell me their own stories. They often say, “I've never shared this with anybody,” I've gotten that over and over, “I've never told anybody this, I've never talked about it.” And I thought, well, why not just do a writing workshop right there in the theater afterward with audience members around loss. And it's been amazing. So I just have them do a little visualization or think about what happened in the show - like a line that triggered them or an experience in their own life - and then we write for ten minutes. And then they oftentimes will share their writing. It's been quite beautiful to watch what happens.

To learn more about Ann Randolph, visit annrandolph.com

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A Conversation with Marjorie Salvaterra

A Conversation with Ann Randolph