Through hers, through theirs

The first project… For the longest time, I had dreams of working my way up the corporate ladder and becoming ‘someone’.  Well that all changed the moment I looked down at a tiny little face and called him, my son.   I was in love. Love like I had never felt before and coming from an upbringing that was deficient in love, I jumped in with my heart and soul.  Everything I thought I had wanted wasn’t important anymore and staying at home with my babies (my lil girl came two years later) was everything to me.  My new life completely revolved around them but as the years went by, and they needed me less and less, I suddenly realized I had no idea who I was anymore and I had lost myself along the way.   I struggled with having to reinvent myself and a friend asked me to take photos of her child so I thought I would give it a try.  As you can imagine, I immersed myself into learning as much and a quickly as I could.  With a new direction in life I photographed anything and everyone to establish a style and help me with learning what I wanted to specialize in.  But I found myself disheartened.  Almost every woman I photographed hated the way she looked and wanted the magic of photoshop to nip and tuck something away.   We are so hard on ourselves and I wanted to create something to help women ‘see’ themselves through a different lens.  As I photographer, I don't see your flaws or what you don't like about yourself until you tell me. I see your smile, I see your eyes, I see the crinkle on your nose when you laugh, I see you! 

I created this project asking moms to bring their children into my studio.  Not really telling them too much as I wanted their answers to be genuine and unrehearsed.   I asked the women to share with me, what they didn’t like about themselves and I took a photo.   I was surprised at how much self-loathing we can talk about when asked.  Next after the tears were wiped away, the kids came in and moms took a break.  I asked the kids what they loved about their moms and they came up with the most incredible responses.   After all this was done, I posted each mom and her kids to Facebook each day leading up to Mother’s Day.  The response was more than I had ever imagined. The women involved saw themselves differently in a way that mattered, for all the beauty and goodness they forgot they had and for the beauty they held, inside and out.   After this project was complete, I knew in my heart this was what I wanted, needed to do and to continue showing people, despite what they saw in the mirror every day, a look at themselves through a different lens. 

We are all unique in our own way, celebrate you, so your children will do the same for themselves.