02/25/2025
It's been nearly 20 years since I first picked up a camera!
This is the only picture I could find of myself from that time. A little cult girl...I didn't smile 'til I was 20 apparently. A lot of unhappiness and pain in my life during those years.
The camera brought me one of the only pleasures of my life growing up. After every joy a child typically experiences in their formative years was stolen from me and destroyed, Nature was all that was left. I went on to take thousands of photos, mostly of flowers and sky-scapes. Every beautiful thing I witnessed was fair game.
I hid nearly all my talent because as my enjoyment of the art became known to my father, it was a new form of punishment to take it away. I once lost it for a full year when I was 15 for a fight I had with my sister. I counted every day til I got it back again.
When I was 20 I saved every penny, borrowed some from my sister; and went to the library to order my very own camera, a DSLR, from Amazon. It was $500, an exorbitant amount for me.
Up until now I had used the little digital point-and-shoot the family had and would upload my pictures to the computer every time I shot them so no one would find them. I had the new camera mailed to a friend's house I could trust. If my father had found out he would have destroyed it. I never had a prouder moment and I still use that camera today even though it's completely worn out! My mom, siblings, and I left our home in the cult the next year and traveled across the country to stay with our grandparents. I began to share my work publicly as art consistently just 4 years ago.
(The head covering I'm wearing meant I started my bleed and was a 'woman' now. I had slippery hair and couldn't for the life of me keep it secured on. I am wearing hand-me-down clothes from older girls in the cult. There were 7 kids in our family by then and 4 of them slept in my room.)
What I show the world not only reflects all this personal history but lets me transform it, turning it into something others can hopefully connect with. The beauty I find in it all is a mix of pain and pleasure, evolving into something that holds so much meaning and significance to me, and maybe even for all you who get to see it.
This is a powerful thing for me to finally realize and I think on it often. Every image I capture is more than just a photograph—it's a fragment of my own journey. The experiences, the challenges, and the growth, all contribute to a story that's behind the frame.
When I capture a scene and share it with the world, I’m not just showing you a pretty moment—I’m sharing a history of pain and pleasure from a world most don't know still exists. Real misogyny, religious control, and severe child abuse. Each image holds a reminder of everything I’ve gone through to get here, all of those experiences coming together to form something new and beautiful. It might be just another beautiful image to the world but for me, it's a stitch in the quilt of my journey...
📷 ✨ 📷 ✨ 📷 ✨ 📷 ✨ 📷
