Lady with the Goose

For a moment, I wondered if I was far more deliriously jet-lagged than I realized. I was busy corralling my two children and one teenager through a bustling market on the border between China and Tibet when a vision crossed my path that seemed to pause the Earth on its axis. Even my youngest stopped to point at the woman dressed in bright red, with a startled-looking goose balanced precariously on her head. We watched in a daze as she strode up the winding path between the storefronts, crossing nonchalantly in front of dark doorways and ignoring the people who, like us, had stopped to stare.

At the time, I was there with my then-husband for a primatology and conservation expedition. We decided to turn our work trip into a hybrid family adventure, which meant I was left alone juggling snacks, water bottles, sunscreen, and the rapid-fire complaints of my 6- and 10-year-olds, while my teenage stepson did his best to keep us all together. Despite the chaos, it was a wonderful trip, filled with new experiences that forever changed the way my children saw the world.

Still fresh into photography, I carried my film canisters and an old Yashica twin-lens camera I had purchased in a street market for the trip. Until then, I had mostly used it to capture family moments that would eventually line the walls of the stairs leading from our basement to the main entrance, an endless collage of our lives. But in that moment, peering through the waist-level viewfinder of a camera that was still new to me, watching as the woman and her avian sidekick appeared upside down and ghostlike on the ground glass, I knew I had to act quickly.

I stood and moved toward her, kids in tow, hoping with everything I had that she would be open to a stranger taking her portrait. We shared no common language, and she was clearly in a hurry, so I could not ask her to stop or pose. Instead, I launched into a familiar game of charades, smiling and gesturing with my camera as I tried to make my case. The great bird on her head flapped its wings impatiently, shifting to keep its balance as she paused to listen. When she gave me a big grin of understanding, I was able to snap exactly three frames there in the open shade of a building, its dark doorway creating a natural black backdrop behind her. After three clicks, she gave me a friendly but dismissive wave, and off she went.

Subscribe to my Newsletter

Keep up with my latest work, exhibitions, and upcoming events including book signings, speaking tours, and panels.

Months later, after returning home and developing the film, I finally saw the three images. In the first, the goose is flapping its wings and the frame is blurry. In the second, she is mid-sentence, looking straight into the lens. But the third was, miraculously, beautifully exposed and perfectly in focus. It captured everything: the joy, the absurdity, and the magic of that split-second encounter. I titled it simply Lady with the Goose, like a storybook character, which was exactly how she had appeared to me and my kids.

For days afterward, I wondered about the goose. Was it customary to travel with poultry in that way? Judging by the stares of passersby, that seemed unlikely. Was it a pet then? The animal was well-fed and was clearly at ease in its reclined position on her head, accustomed to this unusual form of transportation. Finally, near the end of our trip, I spotted her again in the same market, and I was delighted to see the goose at her side. In one practiced motion, she swept her companion onto her head and disappeared around a corner.

I still have the original slides from that day and have recently released a special edition print of her that includes the original film’s edge markings, just visible along the border in a faint red.