This project is a combination of poetry and photography.  Working together, we have seen benches from around the world that range from the traditional board with legs attached to creations made from parts of old cars.  Locations and moments of human interaction have varied widely.

My wife, poet and prose writer Betsy Joseph, and I have collaborated on this journey.  Betsy adds her unique perspective with observations of whimsy and reverential reflection in seventeen syllables.  A haiku, her poetic form for this project, is much like a photograph, each in its way a brief observation of a human moment in time.  This pairing results in an effective combination.

Each image below leads to a grouping of photographs and poems.  The exception is Benches I, which leads to the complete collection of images from the first phase of this project.

Click on each image to move to the individual page