Greg Davis (‘92) thinks there’s a meaningful moment of time between when you wake up and when you’re actually awake.
“[It’s] right before you open your eyes. . . You wake up and then you open your eyes. But it’s brief. It’s little. It’s a sliver,” he explained.
This sliver of space between waking up and being awake can sometimes linger. Some mornings it can sometimes feel like the lights are slowly turning on, your body slowly warming up.
Then, there are the mornings when that space, that threshold, that sliver is very brief. When the lights come on all at once and you rocket awake in bed. A synapse connecting. The right neurons firing. Something clicks and you’re bolted upright.
Back in February, Greg had one of those mornings.
Before his eyes completely opened, before his mind was even fully in a rational space, a thought came to him and he knew it was Truth. He sat up.
“In that moment, before I opened my eyes, but when I was awake, I got hit by a lightning bolt. . . It was like, BAM!”
It all became clear to him. Some people call these an epiphany. Greg calls this a God Wink.
If you were to walk into Illuminate Art Space in the Cultural District of Fort Worth today, I don’t know if I could predict what your eyes would be drawn to first. This is the home of Greg Davis’ award-winning photography, and where he and his wife, Amy — an artist herself in the jewelry world — host the shows of many artists.
There is so very much to admire in their perfectly curated studio — photos and prints and souvenirs and books of art and, naturally, an upright piano. The piano was Greg’s mom’s. There’s a sign above the front door in memory of his great-grandmother. (She was adopted by George Loving — son of Oliver Loving. Yes, for you history buffs that’s the Goodnight-Loving Trail’s Oliver Loving.)
I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention Greg’s Baylor degree placed prominently and proudly by the front door. Greg promised he didn’t rearrange its placement just for my visit. I believe him. He’s a fourth-generation Bear. He had his dad’s Baylor ring ready to show me along with a few more collectibles from his family’s deep ties and love for the Green and Gold.
On every wall of Illuminate, perfectly placed in a precise and what you immediately know is a proper order, are the scenes from Greg’s storied career. Dozens and dozens of scenes from his time as a photographer. Scenes that span the globe and stretch the edges of what stories you thought possible for a photo to tell.
Along the back wall of the front room, a television rotates through other works. A mantle rests below the TV with a series of cameras and trinkets. One of those cameras changed Greg’s life. What today we would consider an awfully simple, considerably cheap camera captured the image Greg is most widely recognized for: The Blanket Weaver.
He purchased the camera, an Olympus C-750 Ultra Zoom with only 4 megapixels (your iPhone has 12-times that), in the summer of 2004.
“When I took off around the world for a year, I knew I wanted to photograph, but I didn’t jump into a professional-grade system,” he said. “It was just, ‘I need something small, something to stick in my pocket.’”
That little silver Olympus fit the bill.
Greg chose to travel the world for a year in order to escape the years of pain and waves of tragedy he had just lived through. Though, “lived” might not be the right word there. When he left for his yearlong trip, Greg felt like he had survived what life had thrown at him . . . barely.
“From 2000 to 2004, I had five family members die,” Greg recounted. “I was attacked by a gang. I’ve got 40 stitches in my head and neck from a violent gang attack. I lost 95 percent of my money in a bad financial move, which was a significant amount. I was 33. I was working in big tech [when the industry was booming], so . . . it was significant. I was cheated on by a woman that I was in love with, and my heart was broken into a million pieces. And then I flipped my car three times and rolled my car. Unscathed. I didn’t get on my knees at that moment, but it wasn’t long after that, that I surrendered and that’s when… and I quit drinking.”
Through God and a lot of hard work, Greg began to heal himself. He was saved by Jesus, but he also had a life to rebuild. He met with a therapist.
“I went and talked to this therapist and I’m talking to him and in the middle of our session, he stood up and he goes, ‘Hi, my name is Mike and I’m an alcoholic.’ I was like, ‘Oh.’ He sat back down. He goes, ‘Greg, I have to share my story with you. I was in a bar when I was about your age…’ and I don’t recall the details right now personally, it’s been a while since I thought about it. But he said that someone broke a bottle, cut him, and I think . . . it might’ve been his neck too, but yeah, he also was hurt by someone in a bar with a broken bottle. Same thing.
“That was pretty powerful. For me, it’s almost like [a trail of] breadcrumbs, God Winks, I call them. [And I knew], ‘Oh, okay, I’m supposed to be here. I’m supposed to hear that.’ . . . When he stood up and did that and shared that, it was an epiphany. [Like God telling me], ‘You’re on the right path.’ Yet another God Wink in this line of these things that continues. Continues to this day. They still continue. But after that, I got sober . . . and I sold it all in 2004. And I took off for a year.”
Through all those God Winks, the coincidences, and especially the tragedies, the invitation from a friend to join an epic year of globetrotting brought Greg to what he knew he wanted to do: photograph.
“I was looking for a change,” Greg remembers. “And so I was like, ‘Yes, I’m in.’”
So, with his little Olympus camera, off he went.
Over the course of their journey, Greg developed a friendly, healthy competition with his friend.
“They would go off and do their thing as a couple. And I would go off and do my thing solo,” Greg explained. “But we would circle back to where we stayed and we would share photos. And he had the same exact cameras I had, same exact camera. So I’d show him pictures and he’d show me pictures . . . So it kind of created this — guys are guys — it created this competition, if you will, but it wasn’t spoken. Just ‘I need to get some better pictures tomorrow.’ And then we started both doing it just without mentioning it, and it created this sort of intention for our trip. I knew I wanted to be on that trip taking great photos. The best I could. It was the chance of a lifetime.”
They traveled to 14 countries in nine months before reaching Vietnam. Greg finds himself on a trail in a remote village named Sa Pa. The people of Sa Pa are mostly Hmong, an ethnic group from East and South Asia. While it is not known exactly where the word “Hmong” comes from, Hmong people have, historically, suffered tremendous oppression, enslavement, abuse, and pain. Until the 1970s, they were often called “Miao” people, but this term translates to “barbarians” or “wild.” Literally, this translates as “Sons of the Soil.” I read where this loosely translates to our word for “slave.” Thankfully, Hmong leaders and scholars began advocating for a change. While “Miao” meant “slave,” they advocated for the term that better defined their people: “Hmong” or “free men.”
This is, of course, a reminder of the power of language, the importance of our words. To believe oneself a slave will keep you trapped in enslavement. To break free, to free yourself of your demons and debts, to change your own mind, can open the world to you. But only if you are open to it. Only if you’re ready. Sometimes God will help you with the readiness — heck, sometimes he’ll pick when you’re ready for you — but the rest is on us. It takes a leap of faith on our part.
Like Greg took when we set out with a camera to travel the world. One morning on his trip, while in that village of Sa Pa, Greg woke up freer than he had ever been. And God was waiting there with all the readiness.
While walking along the dusty trail outside Sa Pa, Greg saw a woman ahead of him.
“She was in front of me and the grass was tall. We were walking through on a single track trail, and her hands were flashing as she’s walking away from me, blue and green,” he recounted.
That stood out to Greg. He noticed the uniqueness, the beauty.
“I’d never seen a woman with blue and green hands before, so I said, ‘Hello, excuse me.’ She turns around, we’re in the mountains, and it kind of spooked her, so I backed away and kind of belittled myself a little bit. I asked her, without speaking her language, with [sort of] signing, pointing to my own hands.”
“What’s on your hands?” he asked.
“She looked down at her hands. She had to think for a moment to try to explain what she did. And she pointed to herself, she made a weaving motion. She tapped each hand, she dunked them into two vats of something I didn’t know exactly, and I just … something told me, ‘Have her hold her hands out.’”
A God Wink. A nudge because Greg was ready.
“I took one picture with that camera and didn’t think anything about it. She turned around, she walked off, looked at me like I was crazy. And off I went. Didn’t think anything about it. I’d been doing this for nine months. So it was just connecting with people.”
Greg looked up to God and said, “Thank you. That was lovely.”
He had no idea what that single photograph would open for him. He just had gratitude for the brief moment of connection and the opportunity to do what he loved. As a free man.
When he made it back to the United States, a friend recommended he sell his photographs. “Why not? I’ll give it a shot,” he said.
From the first day at this first tent, that photo — The Blanket Weaver — has been a hit.
“From the very first day, I haven’t been able to print them fast enough really. It’s been unbelievable.
And this image in particular has surfaced as my signature piece, really has helped define my work and my career. And it’s been very special to me.”
To be honest, I think Greg is still surprised by its success. Maybe he is not surprised by the photograph’s success or that the story of this woman connects with just about everyone who sees it. But, in his humble way, Greg struggles to understand why he was given the opportunity to capture that moment. He still scratches his head at why God picked him.
Of course, it is because of that very humility — and the story of love, family, tragedy, struggle, surrender, and salvation that built Greg’s humble nature — that God chose him to notice this scene and capture it. To say he is still obsessed with it 20 years later is an understatement. Give him a few minutes and he will tell you everything. Though he only had a brief moment with this woman, he has studied and researched and built a broader understanding of such a simple photograph of colorful hands. I’ll let him explain.
“It is all based on Indigo dye. She’s a Black Hmong villager, and this is pre-oxidized and oxidized Indigo. This is to dye the hemp, and this is to dye the silk. They embroider with the silk and they use the hemp to do the whole outfit. She wears this key ring. Is it a key ring? Is it a wedding ring or is it part of her work?”
See what I mean? Obsessed.
But, wait. There’s more.
“One of her pinkies is half a digit longer than the other. If you look at them [on me], they’re even.”
Greg held up his hand to show me what he meant. Then he pointed back to The Blanket Weaver’s pinkie.
“Here, they’re a little bit longer. And this pinkie is about half a digit longer. And then if you draw a fist really strongly, really bear down on closing your fist, pay attention to where your pressure points are, pay real close where you feel pressure. Really squeeze. Where are your pressure points? So she’s left-handed, seems to be, she’s working harder with this left hand than she is with her right hand. So I’ve always said I wanted to go back and try and find this woman.”
Why, I asked Greg.
It’s simple, isn’t it?
“This woman changed my life,” Greg answered with what seemed like the very beginning of tears and a wide smile.
Remember how Greg shot awake in bed one morning a few months ago? The God Wink that left him shouting, “AHA!”
That realization was Greg knew he had to go back to Vietnam. It was time to find her and offer his sincere thanks for changing his life.
He had some doubts. It was kind of last minute. Visas would be difficult to get. Flights would be expensive, if available. But the doors kept opening. Easy visa approval. The flights fell right into place. The right guide — a friend of Greg’s with a world of connections through this region of Vietnam — was available.
“I wanted to be in those mountains on March 9th and looking for this woman,” Greg explained.
“I connected with [my friend, Phil], and went over to their place. I sat down and I said, ‘I’m here to find a woman.’ [Phil] said, ‘Well, can you tell me a little bit more?’ I said, “Twenty years ago, I was in the mountains here and I took a photograph of a Black Hmong villager with indigo blue and green hands, and I want to try to find her. And I wonder if you can help me.’ And he said, ‘I think we might be able to help you.’ And [Hua], his wife, said, ‘Well, can I see the picture?’ I showed them the picture. She looked at the picture. She’s like, ‘Let me see the picture of her face.’”
At this point, Greg paused. He sighed. There was grief, regret in his voice.
“‘I don’t have a picture of her face,’ [I explained]. And she’s like, ‘What?!’ She goes, ‘All you have is this?’ And I was like, ‘That’s all I have.’”
She handed the photo back to Greg and she walked away. She walked off. A fool’s errand to find some woman with indigo hands in a village of people who weave indigo with their hands. Phil wasn’t deterred, though. He saw it as an adventure.
“Here,” Phil said. “Let me introduce you to my two adopted daughters, Cha and Zuh.”
Cha and Zuh came in. Maybe they could help scour the village for The Blanket Weaver. They asked to see the photo. Cha held the photo, her eyes widened. Greg was confused. Cha set the photo down on the table and held her hands out.
One pinkie was shorter than the other.
They were all wide eyed and gape-mouthed.
Soon, they set out — Greg, Phil, Cha, and Zuh — looking for The Blanket Weaver. It had been 20 years. As they walked, Greg struggled to put the pieces back together. The terrain had changed. Or had it? There were new houses. Or were there? The trails had merged together. Or had they? He thought this was the right place, but, even if it was, he knew the odds were slim.
“It had really changed, because I had spent the previous two days trying to find this trail that I thought that I was on 20 years before, but I couldn’t because there’s so much development,” Greg said. He knew they needed a better system. Divide and conquer wasn’t working. Phil had an idea.
“So, here’s Phil and his family,” Greg explained. “Well, [Phil] said, ‘Okay, girls, we’re going to go down and here’s the deal.’”
Phil asked a few clarifying questions. She was Black Hmong, right? Right. It was 20 years ago, right? Yes. How old did Greg think the woman was at the time? Greg guessed 45 or 55. Something in that range.
“Well, that’s going to make her 65 to 75,” Phil said. “The average lifespan in this area for ethnic minority, it’s about 55. So, we’re looking for a woman with [blue and green indigo died on her] hands [and pinkies that aren’t the same length]. She might not even be around. So, we’ve got a real challenge ahead of us here, but we’re hopeful.”
The next day they met back up.
Phil said he had run the numbers. Greg recounted the conversation.
“There are 7,000 Black Hmong,” he said. “There might be a Black Hmong village, and then a Red Hmong village, and then a Striped Hmong. And on and on, so they’re kind of mixed. But [Phil] goes, ‘Of the villages down there, there’s about 7,000 people, Hmong people, in four different villages. And they’re kind of spread out a little bit. Of that, 3,500 are female. Half, so 3,500. Of 3,500 women, how many are in the age group beyond life expectancy do you have?’ [Phil] goes, ‘I can only estimate, but you’re probably looking for maybe 100 women.’”
Greg paused to let that sink in.
“In this whole valley,” Greg paused again. “There might be 100 that are 65 to 75 years old.
The odds were not in their favor. But they had hope. And a plan.
“It was raining the night before pretty heavily so it was really muddy and really challenging, and trails were super challenging,” Greg recalled. “But we made our way down into this valley with these two Hmong girls, just me and [Cha and Zuh]. And they were excited.”
They were Greg’s runners. When they would see a house or when someone had told them where a house should be, the girls would run up the hill. Their father had given them a script.
First, Greg explained, they needed to ask if there was an old woman in the house. “Because if there’s not an old woman, sorry, got to keep moving. There’s no time to be farting around with it. They would just ask, ‘Is there an older woman?’ And, if not, say, ‘Okay, thank you so much.’”
If there was an older woman, their next job was to find out her age. Sixty-five to 75 or so. If they found an older woman about 65 or 75, then the game was on and they could try to communicate with her. Ask to see her hands, compare the photo, tell the story. See if she remembered meeting an American photographer on a trail in the valley below over two decades ago.
It was all hit and miss. Sometimes the age would match, but not the hands. Other times, the other way. It was an adventure, but there was a growing sense of dread. Was this all in vain?
After an hour and a half, Cha let Greg know she had a lead. A woman named Song matched the demographics. He made his way up and stood by as Cha and Song began exchanging bits of information in Hmong. The woman confirmed a foreigner took her photo years ago. She described him as having a beard, darker than Greg’s is now.
“This was the first real hit we got,” Greg explained.
He asked Song to hold out her hands. The pinkies were a little off. Greg felt like it was not exactly the same as his photo, but enough to warrant further questions. Things kept lining up.
“We’ve been talking for about 20 or 30 minutes so far,” Greg recalled. “And I’m going, ‘Oh my God, did we just find her?’ What do I do now? Hug her? No? I don’t know yet. ‘Can you ask her where she took the photograph?’ And she walked out on her porch and she pointed up, and it was all rice terraces, and there was a water buffalo up here, and there’s a tree up there. She goes, ‘Right up there by that tree.’ And I was like, ‘I don’t think this is her. I don’t remember crossing the river that day.’”
Close. So close.
Greg snapped a few pictures of the Song’s hands, made sure to take a photo of her face this time, too. He grabbed a few videos. All just in case. But he didn’t think it was her. He didn’t remember crossing the river that day.
No luck the rest of the day, but Greg was still thinking about this woman when he made it back to his room that night. He dug through his email and found his journal entry from that journey in March 2005.
“I had never read it since then, I don’t think. So, here I was in my cabin with this possibility, and I read my journal. And in my journal it says, ‘Went on a hike today in Sa Pa, beautiful area, met some locals, even skipped some rocks with a local. Hiked about six or seven hours.’
Ever the showman, Greg paused for dramatic effect, a smirk curled on the side of his mouth. Then, his voice sprang to life with cheer and he thrust his hands in the air.
“I’m like, ‘Holy shit! Skipped rocks with kids! Where do you skip rocks?! In. A. River. Could it be? Yes, it could have been!’ So, now I go back to Phil and I’m like, ‘Guys, you’re not going to believe this but I did cross that river that day, and we need to go back up. We need to go back up there and just keep talking.’”
They went back the next day to further investigate. Greg brought the photo back out. In the background of the photo, behind The Blanket Weaver’s hands, you can see a red scarf. Song recognized it.
“She goes, ‘That red, my sister bought me that red sash,’” Greg explained. “It was kind of like a jacket thing, a sash. [The woman continued,] ‘My sister bought me that in a market about 20-something years ago. My sister and I wore this.’ And Phil goes, ‘Holy shit.’ I was like, ‘What?’ He goes, ‘Black Hmong don’t wear red. They don’t wear red. That Red Dao wears red, that’s not a native Black Hmong thing to be wearing.” And for her to point out that her and her sister bought that in a market, and they both wore it during this timeframe is really telling.
“So we asked her, ‘Can you come back up to Sa Pa? And we’ve got some indigo dyes, and would you put your hands in indigo so we can see more of the lines?’”
Song agreed and then next day showed up in a beautiful, handmade outfit.
Here, the storyteller in Greg takes over. He has to explain the significance of what she wore that day.
“So she came up, full dress, full dressed in her outfit. Women work on their outfit for a year. They grow the hemp, they harvest the silk, they grow the indigo, they weave and embroider these outfits all year long. And then for Tet — their New Near in January — they all come out in their new outfits. And they wear those outfits while they’re working on the next year’s outfit.”
This meeting was in early March. Song’s outfit would only have been completed two months prior.
“When she was sitting around the house she was just regular sort of hanging loose clothes. But when she came out on the town she had this outfit,” Greg explained.
She dunked her hands in the blue and green indigo the group had prepared. It all looked scary close. The lines matched up. Greg was busy photographing the whole thing. All while standing in awe and amazement.
“I was 80 percent sure at that point,” he said.
Greg collected the photos — the original Blanket Weaver that had captured so much fame and the ones he just documented. He sent them to a contact for forensic analysis. Could it prove this was, in deed, the same woman? Three hours later, they heard back. A 95 percent match.
That’s when the celebration began. They united all of Song’s family.
Before going back up the hill for what turned out to be Song’s celebration, as a means of double-checking, Amy had compiled a list of other analysts and sent them to Greg. He scanned the names and that night had sent the photos to one that stood out in St. Paul, Minnesota.
“The Hmong people partnered with the Americans during the Vietnamese war,” Greg explained. “And when the Vietnamese won the war, the Hmong people were ostracized. A lot of them had to get the heck out of Dodge, especially those that were really embattled with the Americans and fighting the Viet Cong. So, a lot of those people ended up in St. Paul, Minnesota. So, here’s this guy. I look down the list, bing, it just jumped out at me. [I remember thinking,] ‘St. Paul, oh my God, he’s going to care. He’s going to know about the Hmong’s plight. He might even have friends that are Hmong being from St. Paul.’ So, I fired one email to him, including the first report we got back and the pictures.”
The next day, Greg was leaving for the airport, when up rides Song on a motorbike. She had a bag, in it, a gift for Greg.
“In that bag is that outfit that took her a year to make that she was wearing a few days before.”
Greg couldn’t believe it. Without a translator, he couldn’t convey the depths of his gratitude, but he did his best. They smiled with each other, shared a private moment of gratitude and joy.
“And the guy next to me on the airplane got an earful because he was the first person to hear this story,” Greg said with a laugh. “Well, I get back and I got sick on reentry back into the U.S., and I’m in bed for, I don’t know, four or five days. And I get an email, out of the blue. Ding! Elite Forensic Services from St. Paul, Minnesota. Super professional drawings . . . all these technical terms for all these locations [on the hands], and this, and that, [and how] this doesn’t change, and a full analytical opinion of hands, pictures from The Blanket Weaver in 2005 to Song’s in 2025.”
Another pause. And a solemn look
“100 percent not a match.”
“NOT a match?!” I blurted back at Greg.
“Not a match. 100 percent,” Greg confirmed. He said the person from St. Paul explained, “‘Any person who gave you the positive, I challenge you to get in touch with them, but you’re probably not going to hear back from them because no one’ — these are his words — ‘no one in their right mind would say that this is a match. This is not the same person.’”
I could feel the grief in Greg’s voice. I asked him how all this made him feel.
“I’ve been wanting to do this forever,” Greg said. “20 years of this. This was the thing. And to be so close, but it turn out not to be the one . . . I’m really torn.”
“I have to look at it as how it happened is how it’s intended to happen. Otherwise, it’ll haunt you,” Greg said. “Life will haunt you if you have these expectations. Just let it be what it is. . . . I’m just the vessel for something greater, and now that story continues on.”
What seemed like tears were forming in the corners of Greg’s eyes again. He broke eye contact with me. Maybe trying to keep himself grounded. He glanced up. A little smile came back. Maybe he was saying a short prayer of thanks for the journey, even despite the outcome.
As he glanced back down, he looked over at Amy. She was watching him. They caught each other’s gaze.
Just like that. I watched as Greg relaxed. His pain gone. His angst washed away.
Greg Davis may not have found The Blanket Weaver, but — in that brief moment — I watched and saw all I needed to know. Greg had found the woman that mattered to him in Amy. The rest is all just a journey.
Before I left Illuminate that day, Amy and I had a moment to chat. She fixed me a glass of water and we talked. When you talk to Amy, her eyes make you feel like the only person in the world. They’re bright and captivating. She doesn’t just give you her attention, she focuses intently on you. As if anticipating every syllable. She told me about how she and Greg met and their story of dating long-distance — during COVID, I might add. Before they met, she had prayed for something.
She said it took a while after her divorce, but, finally, Amy found herself praying to meet someone. She told God she was ready.
“But, I had one request,” she said. “Can this person be someone who notices things?”
A Noticer of life’s most precious moments, the big things, and the important-but-quiet details, the small things, the beauty in others, and the uniqueness of a moment.
Turns out, God was listening.
Because He gave her Greg.
A fellow artist, a fellow traveler, a fellow tender, loving, vibrant soul, but, most importantly to Amy, a Noticer.
