Mary Clare learned photography from a colleague in Taiwan, and when she returned to the USA in 1971, she quit public school teaching and became a free lance photographer, doing the usual wedding, articles, newsletters, dog portraits, people portraits. She taught photography at Montgomery College in Maryland.

She also used black and white photography as her art form, creating some outrageous images, and playing with juxtaposing words with images, when there wasn’t an apparent fit.

She has returned to this same work after retiring, using digital cameras and Photoshop. The way words play with images, back and forth, is of great interest to her.

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Photographs by Mary Clare Powell