2022 PEOPLE PHOTOGRAPHY IN REVIEW

Last year began with more funerals than weddings, snowstorms than sunshine, and more devastating news than glimmers of hope. That particular January felt colder than usual. I’m not sure if it was the actual weather conditions, or the condition of my own heart. I’d experienced hardship and wrestled my own “inner demons” before, but this was a time I did not even recognize my own self.

I could write a quick caption, display to you a mound of photos, and highlight the beautiful parts of what I do and the amazing people I have had in front of my lens. But you see, that is not real life. The beauty and the moments caught in the perfect nanosecond of light and time are certainly a part of life, but our pristine “screen version” shrines are not the entire puzzle. Behind the lens, the glorious edits, the moody expressions, there is a human with a soul who experiences the same ebbs and flows of life just as everyone else. Sometimes the photos are laughing, while the person behind the screen is crying.

I think it’s easy to assume that someone who has a knack for something or a talent of sorts somehow has life more figured out than everyone else. I’ve had some interactions that have indicated this, and I sincerely hope that I never give someone the idea that I have it all figured out. I want so badly to be seen for who I really am and connect to others in this way. I will never be a walking brand and I will never post just to fit the algorithm. I don’t care about followers or all the numbers. I never want to see people as merely a dollar sign and contract signature. I am constantly on search for purpose and connection in everything I do, and for me, photography has been the most beautiful cultivation of just that. 2021 was like a rebirth of photography and in 2022, photography became like a lifeline. You see…

In January, I was in a major crisis.

The full story is one for another day and proper timing. Any vagueness is because of that, but let me put it this way: Never in my life have I so badly wanted out of life. And never in my life have I believed from the depths of my soul that I would never heal and move forward. It was not so much the circumstances (which was a LOT of intense circumstances to handle all at once), as it was who I became in the process. I have never experienced a headspace so dark. It was like a racetrack of thoughts and situations I could not escape. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t function. Mere existence felt like a chore. I’d been home from Turkey for a month and staying with my parents. I had everything set in stone to move out in January, but was so emotionally and mentally unstable, that I delayed it and found myself in my childhood bedroom walls an extra month. My mental health plummeted to levels I had no idea were possible.

I knew I needed help, but the day I really knew I needed help was one I will never forget. My inward struggles were so intense that they kept me awake. I pulled an all nighter. And then, I pulled another all nighter. I felt like a slave to my own self; a prisoner forced on a merciless racetrack of intrusive thoughts with no exit. If you have ever experienced the twisted phenomenon that is a break from reality…then you know exactly what I am talking about. I remember it snowed all weekend, and I’d never felt more metaphorically and literally trapped in my entire life. I remember a friend called and reminded me just to eat and drink. Later that day, my mom knocked on the door.

“I’m concerned about you. You’ve been in here in the dark all day.”

I remember this sinking feeling of my worst fear coming true: Losing all control. I was convinced that reality could not change and I was convinced that I would never heal. I felt like my insides and my own soul had been gutted from my body. The only way I can best describe it is straight out of one of many entries I wrote during that time:

“I am weary. I am slap exhausted. I do not recognize who is in my own body anymore. It feels like something broke inside my brain. I am scared I will never return to normal or my mental health restored. My thoughts consume me and they will not stop. I feel like a slave to my inner world; a prisoner to my relentless thoughts. Sometimes merely existing feels like torture. You can run away from people, places, circumstances; but you cannot run away from your own self. It is my own self that I am trapped inside; my own body I could crawl out of and leave its exoskeleton behind. No one understands. No one ever will. And no one can help. I feel brainwashed by everyone’s opinions and as much as I talk my brains out, one thing still remains the same: Reality. People try to make life sound like it’s so good, so full of hope and this destination of perfection. What they don’t tell you is that mere pockets of good and hope are not always enough to outweigh the pain and the torture and the constant angst. If Earth really is not home, then why suddenly hype it up to something it’s not? This world is a house of cards. The idea that staying in the world purely because ‘there is good’ is such an illusion. Maybe it would be more compelling if we knew how to ride through pain, through grief, through discard. But the cliche quotes, mediocre sayings, and movements who want to ‘prevent’ just by telling others they are ‘good enough’ or ‘worthy’? We’re promised this honeymoon like turn around for staying, and for some, maybe that is true. For others, reality is still the same, life’s darkness is still the same, and the house of cards collapses no sooner than we hear the word ‘hope’.” 

I landed in a therapist’s office. I took a field trip to a behavioral health center. I begged God to heal me. Others begged on my behalf. I begged Him to change my reality. Yet for two solid months, I felt stuck. Every time I heard Too Good To Not Believe on the radio, I soaked in every word and wanted so badly for a miracle in my own life. I remember thinking to myself, “If only Jesus were here and I could touch even but just the hem of His garment like the bleeding woman….”

“Can you please, please…create beauty from this pain?”

I knew God could heal me, but I was also convinced that my reality was unredeemable and my life was over. I remember a friend reminded me that all I needed was a mustard seed of faith. She very firmly advised me to “Go and create some art” and allow my soul to be authentically, candidly gutted in it. Let me tell you: I was so inwardly numb that I felt zero joy for even creativity; let alone digging out my tripod and sitting in front of my own lens. Every single one of my self portraits were forced. Every single time I created something, I felt nothing. At times, it felt pointless. I wasn’t happy or satisfied or even making some earth shattering piece of art.

Isn’t it funny how we can suddenly resent the very things that bring us to life? How the very things that fuel liveliness in our veins can feel so bleak, so bland, and so forced? Yet even in the bleakness and apathy, I held onto just the teeniest mustard seed of faith that someday I might heal; become “normal” again.

And so in January and February, I created a lot of things like this:

**All wounds/bruises were digitally created

…Little did I know, that teeniest mustard seed was all I needed.

I believe that admiring and appreciating beauty, even amidst our own toil and suffering, is one of the greatest weapons to fight for healing. I even believe that we can find beauty in our own pain; not because the suffering itself is beautiful, but because of how we can be refined and inwardly transformed in the process. I did not feel beautiful when I created each of those self portraits, and every single one was taken when I was at my absolute worst.

But it made me feel seen.

One of my favorite passages in the Bible is where Hagar says, “You are the God who sees me.” Sometimes, I think that is where the true beauty is found. It’s not in the perfect, pristine photograph with carefully handcrafted makeup and a soft edit. It’s not in the algorithmically correct caption. It’s not pretending life is Insta sexy as you’re simultaneously falling a part inside. Sometimes it is in being really and truly known for who we are on the inside…and maybe even exposing that to others. Sometimes it is when we find ourselves in a shower towel on the floor and begging God for relief, or drowning in our questions, or love being kind of like open heart surgery. Every time I pressed “Publish” on one of my portraits, I braced myself for the digital gallows. It felt kind of like ripping out my heart and plastering it on the internet. It was far different than any of my previous work and it was not exactly the prettiest.

And then my spring and summer and then fall calendar booked up. What?! You can imagine my shock. If anything, I thought people would be repulsed by these most unattractive versions of myself. I realized something though.

When we are real, it allows others the room to be real too. It opens the door to welcome another’s pain and trials, highs and lows, triumphs and victories. It welcomes honesty.

Sometimes, beauty is found in telling the world what it is like to be you.

And without even realizing it, that was precisely what my vision became with every face in front of my lens: To feel seen and to see the beauty of themselves simply by being themselves. I think people are so fascinating and so beautiful just as they are. I find them the most so when they forget that someone is even watching them. Photography in and of itself did not heal me, but it helped me to fight for joy. It forced me to quite literally sit with myself and the things I was dealing with and do something with them. It helped me to dig out of what felt like a bottomless pit of despair. It showed me beauty in pain. And it even showed me that if such beauty and wonder was in others…perhaps it was in me too, even if it took some digging.

It was even as if my photography went from death…

to life.

And with every shoot, it was as if my own soul came a little more alive too. I picked flowers with little girls and smelled incense at Catholic mass and was sent home with stickers on my hand from 7 year old posses at weddings. I heard two athletes and rare disease patients share the moment they stared death in the face. I saw baby tears and baby smiles and tiny hands and feet. I saw the joy between families and brides and grooms and wee ones and musicians with their guitar. I found beauty in my own pain, and then I found beauty in the joy of others through my lens.

my friends, enjoy 2022 through my lens:

“…if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, `Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you. ” -Jesus

“Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.” -Jesus