Anastasia Romanova

Interesting story about this woman and this portrait. Our workshop was on location again today, out in the hot sun on a homestead in Montana. We had our models we've been working with all week, but this woman isn't one of them. She was staying on the homestead. When she saw me and saw that I am pregnant, she became super friendly and fascinated by me. She asked me the usual questions, then gave me some advice in her German-sounding accent: "Practice your squatting every day. If you squat, labor and birth will be easy. I birthed my last baby 40 years ago, alone in my home, and it was easy because of all the squatting I had done."

I loved her look, her accent, her outfit, the improbability of finding her here. Emboldened by yesterday's "photograph a stranger" assignment, I asked her if she would allow me to take her portrait. She agreed. She said it had been 30 years since anyone had done her portrait. I asked her for her name and she told me it was Anastasia Romanova (really?!), that she was 73 years old. She said she was a "titled Russian" and who she descended from, though I can't remember. It seemed too good to be true and perhaps it was. She invited me into the homestead to give me her email address and her goat, Sophie, followed us into the house and had to be shooed out. It was one of those weird, wonderful, surreal, magical encounters that I hope I will never forget.