Babs Perkins Photo

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Babs Perkins Photo

Babs Perkins is a photographer & writer. She looks at issues around food/culinary heritage

02/26/2026

If you are in the neighborhood i hope to see you!

‼️🙌🏻🔥 OPENING 🔥🙌🏻‼️

TOPOGRAPHIC RELIEF
New Suminagashi work
March 1 - April 26
The Hub
Station Place
Norfolk, CT

02/07/2026

Brave the bitter cold
You won’t regret it.

01/06/2026

Heading back up to Bethlehem, New Hampshire this Friday for the opening of my new show at The Gallery at WREN with the inimitable Anni Lorenzini.

The carousel has all the details.

I’d love to see you if you’re in the area. If you are not but know folks in or around the North Country or Northeast Kingdom send this their way!

12/19/2025

My first piece for КЧЛ / KUL Cultural-Artistic Gazette (the Journal for Culture, Art, and Science, published by the National Library Radoslav Ljumović in Podgorica, Montenegro.

And in case your Cyrillic is a little rusty, the title translates to:
The Flavor of Memory: How Traditional Cheeses Carry Century of Heritage.

The crux of the article is about the intangible cultural heritage of cheese.

The callout quote says “This cheese is not owned by a single state or a single region. It belongs to the shared history of life in the Dinaric Mountains.”

Writing this article was a gift as it made me think about the work I’ve done over the last 10 years. With the passing of my dear friend I’ve been forced to examine what comes next. My heart is so rooted in this region and Hercegovina still has so many secrets to share but I’m also looking forward to expanding my field work and spending more time exploring the high pastures of Montenegro to share even more stories of cheese from these mountains.

11/11/2025

FREE CHEESE!!
Yes, that’s right. I’ll have some of this rare cheese (that I may or may not have smuggled home in my suitcase) with me for you to try.

Hope to see you Saturday!
Slide 2: Milenija in her rustic make room
Slide 3: Milenija’s hand as she stirs the rennet into the milk
Slide 4: drveni škip (the wooden bowls used for souring the milk) that belong to
Slide 5: sacks of sir iz mijeha/mišine/mjesine in an aging cave
Slide 6:detail of the neck of the sack used to age the cheese

11/07/2025

Just a few sunrise/sunset photos from our last stay on our trip. Podstrana, Croatia. Just south of Split. More on this later but for now, just swipe through these, drink your coffee or tea or whatever and maybe send them to someone you’d like to plan a trip with. (It doesn’t have to be to the beach but if you want to go to Croatia DM me I’ll share my recs and suggestions)

As you can imagine after a month away, the piles on my desks (and the various ones at which I work for clients) are piled high with paper and responsibilities. Not to mention all the annual autumnal tasks around our house that were deferred for the month. (Praying Mother Nature will continue to be kind and provide appropriate afternoons filled with windless golden rays so I can get them done.😬🤞🏼🙏🏼)

I have more photos and some stories to share but with my hands and schedule full I’m resorting to these visual note taking sorts of posts. Hoping they will act as much as a place holder as a reminder that as the madness continues here at home, there is a world out there that has experienced these same sorts of situations (and far worse) and those societies continue on as will we. We just can’t lose hope. We need to rest. And breathe. And watch the sun rise and set. Have dinner with our friends. Shut off for a minute (or a month if necessary).

Beauty exists. Art is resistance. You are loved.

10/22/2025

I don’t even know how to start this one.

A couple of days ago I posted about the passing of Rezlica, one of the many incredible women I’ve encountered over the 10 years I’ve spent criss-crossing Bosnia & Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, and Serbia in search of cheesemakers and other producers of traditional food.

If that left me with a heavy heart. Today it is utterly shattered.

Last evening I learned that the inimitable Gordana Radovanović passed away quite suddenly yesterday.

Two weeks ago we sat in her apartment… I introduced her to my mother, we ate cake celebrating my birthday and then took a walk along the river, ten days ago we drove up to Čapelica to see Ilinka and on the way home she asked if we had plans later and if not we go home the longer way around through the Ljubomirsko polje and over the mountain to Ljubinje. A week ago we we had coffee at Platani (the main market plaza) planning adventures and field visits for when I returned in the spring. Hugging goodbye it was ‘see you soon’.

To try to explain Gordana in an Instagram post is something akin to a hopeless endeavor. Perhaps the very definition of it. Gordana IS the reason my I narrowed my search and focused my work on cheese/traditional foods on historic Hercegovina. She was my first and my main contact to the cheese makers of East Hercegovina.

She, along with my interpreter Amra (who Gordana introduced me to on my very first visit in May of 2015) were the eyes and ears with which I first saw the region. With whom I first tasted the oldest of the old varieties. First bounced and bumped and rattled up steep, rutted tracks posing as roads, to meet the last makers of a very unique cheese. Whose story would, in effect, become my life’s work. And through the discovery of that story would become my dearest friends.

To think of this project, to which I have dedicated close to a quarter of my life, without her voice and wisdom and guidance (and sometimes maddening obstinance) seems ludicrous if not impossible.

She was simultaneously brave and fragile. Heroic and anxious. Seemingly unshakeable but also uneasy. She was a champion of all things Hercegovinian. Especially with food...the old ways and processes, the old varieties, breeds, and strains.

There are so many anecdotes and stories and lessons I could share but I fear I don't have the capacity for that. All I know is I didn't take enough pictures of her. All the things she pointed at? Sure. It is no exaggeration that nearly every image has the stamp of her direction,
encouragement or suggestion behind it. I just wish I'd have turned the lens and recorder on her more.

These two images are two of the scant handful I have. Her lighting the candles on the cake for my birthday this year and a rare selfie we sent to her son from a few years ago.

Rest in peace my dear friend.

10/18/2025

I know I’m behind on posting. I’ve been too busy trying to be present with my mom rather than creating content.

But, I felt like I needed to interrupt everything to repost this photo. This is Rezlica. If you’ve followed me for any time, you’ve no doubt seen this picture before. And if you’ve heard me speak you, you’ve heard me tell the story of this incredibly generous woman.

Over the 10 years since I made this photograph, I’ve often wondered about this tiny yet mighty woman. I would periodically google her and her village, scanning the stories, and death notices, always relieved by what I didn’t find.

Well, yesterday, quite by chance, as I clicked through to Facebook, to check the status of a local restaurant here in Žabljak, Montenegro, learned that at the storied age of 105, she passed away.

The photo is from one of my earliest field visits in search of cheese, 10 year ago May.

To say a lot has happened in those 10 years would be an absurd understatement. So much is different in the world I scarcely recognize it. And now and I retrace some of my earliest steps in the region I am hit with memories long forgotten of who I was all those years ago. The anxiety and fear, (with an understory of exhilaration and joy, but mostly anxiety and fear) and I hardly recognize her.

Fortunately my curiosity fractionally outweighed the anxiety enough to push me to go, and then keep going. To roll into tiny villages on a thread of a lead. To ask questions. Ask them again differently. To overcome resistance from without and within. To endure my own internal monologue. Which in turn crossed my path with Rezlica.

When I think of Rezlica and all she saw and experienced throughout her life. And more sharply, the stories and accumulated knowledge that has died with her. And then I look over at my mom and think of her life and her stories and her experiences and I am compelled to be more patient. With the repetitions and the questions as we try to carve a few more memories on the increasingly unyielding tablet of her mind.

My deepest sympathies and condolences to all of Rezlica’s family and friends.

10/14/2025

We went for a drive yesterday.

.dreamland

07/19/2025

Hope to see you there!

Address

2011 Main St
Bethlehem, NH
03574

Website

http://www.babsperkins.com/

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