painting is always lingering in the back of my mind.” Of her family Amy divulges only what is necessary. From her work titled “My Life with Animals,” we gather they are close and that she has come to use the camera as a means by which to get closer to unmentionables like tragedy, addiction, heartbreak, aging, and death. This is not new territory for photographers, of course – the camera is often a buffer whether we know it or not. Still, the young lady does not flinch. The cat her mother is holding in the painting looks like a version of almost all of the cats in Amy’s life. I am familiar with the one named “Sassy,” one of five who died only after having already lost her vision, poor feline. I am familiar, too, with her second cousin “Faithy,” the young girl from the photo whose pigtails have been wrapped in red ribbons by “Honey,” an adoring mother who “constantly dresses her children in matching bows and outfits.”

“In ten years, where will you be?”

“Happy, with representation, making a living off of photography…and living in a bigger apartment…” (How do you say “AMEN” in Polish?)

“And where will the painting be?” I ask.

I think about Amy when I think about the precious and precocious. Beyond that, I know that Amy looks almost exactly like the woman in the painting, and that in a few years time it will be all hers to hang, guard, and revere.