Lately, I’ve been trying to turn down invitations to collaborate on other people’s projects because I feel that I can ill afford the time. With four speaking appearances coming up in the next six weeks and no shortage of other distractions, I’ve been cramming like mad in preparation.

But not long ago, Chris Vivion and John Loomis of Blue Eyes Magazine asked me to design title cards for two of their routinely beautiful online exhibits of documentary photography: “Borderland” by Carolyn Drake, a look at Ukraine at a crossroads between the traditional and the modern; and “City of Fathers” by Dan Seltzer, a visit to Hebron, where a few hundred Jewish settlers live amidst 150,000 Palestinians. It was just the kind of challenge that I like: it revolved around substantive content and entailed a conceptual mode of thinking — illustration, of a sort.

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