This is essentially a portrait of my friend, Philip Conkling, and me. He was with me when I made this photograph, and we were surely together when we started the Island Institute and for three decades partnered to make that organization into what it is today. He’s been a great partner, finest kind.

This photograph is so simple, and, perhaps because of that, when I look at it, then close my eyes, my imagination smells the wharf, and hears the voices of these men in their work together. 

It makes me think of two critical qualities by which communities endure, independence and interdependence.