I’ve been to Kolkata, India on 8 separate trips since 2013. It has become a second home for me. Even the parts that make me uncomfortable – the constant cacophony of blackbirds, or the scents that I’m so unused to – have become a beacon of home. The blackbirds especially. I used to stay awake listening to their sounds; now they lull me to sleep and awake again in the morning.

I shot these images in Kolkata. I remember the day so well because we laughed the whole way through it. We – my partner in India, Laura Price – scouted a location. We had to do some begging to get this establishment to let us shoot here. The location: a horse stable. They were very wary of our presence… both the horses and the business.

I needed sticks. So, after securing our location, we scoured the grounds looking for sticks. But, it was so well manicured that that, despite the myriad of trees, they had absolutely no sticks laying around.

I’m a DIY kind of girl. When I need sticks, I find them. But being in the middle of a city with an extremely small car, I was out of luck. So, we went to a stick vendor.

Yes, that’s right – a stick vendor. And low and behold, we were able to buy many bundles of sticks. We had to hire a tuk tuk to get them to our venue, and everyone thought we were psychotic.

The funny thing was that it felt like normal life to me. See, I’m used to doing weird things for self-expression. Others aren’t, and sometimes I forget just how weird I seem to people. My everyday experience means dressing up in strange costumes, crawling into dirty places, or smearing myself in paint. I don’t think it’s so much the things I’m doing that freaks people out – it’s that I make time to do weird things for self-expression. Even the things that take a long time to clean up, or are inconvenient.

I know how important self-expression is. I know the value of being able to create something and say, “That’s me. That’s really me.”

And so I pass those lessons on when I go to Kolkata. I teach self-expression. I teach the value of doing weird things purely for yourself.

On this day, I got to work with some very experienced individuals. These women are Dance Movement Therapy trainors. They have done extensive work in how to move your body to heal. And they have done work to ensure others find that same empowerment. Their organization is called Kolkata Sanved.

The girls and I had been working together for years when I shot these images, so they only thought I was mildly crazy when I asked them to come in their best saris and cuddle up in a horse stable in a pile of sticks.

Mildly crazy.

I did get a lot of long stares, and questions of if I was serious, and then a lot of laughing. And a lot of selfies. Obviously.

The program that I run in India (and other countries, like Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Greece) is called “If I Could Fly”. It is a workshop that asks the question, “If you could fly, where would you go? What would that look like?”. I teach how to use a camera to express your deepest emotions. We often deal with themes of freedom, dreams, and emotional pasts.

These images were inspired by that title. These women are exemplary of the mission we are all trying to uphold: to empower those who have been through hardship to rise up and fly.

I hope you enjoy these images.
I hope you inspire someone today.

And I hope that, if you’re feeling down, you remember these women and all they are doing for their community. They regularly build up women who have been trafficked and have been through abuse to help them fly.

Well done, sisters.

What is more magical than our ability to create? To pull something out of thin air, to empower our imagination to be wild. Is there anything more beautiful than pure expression? My world fuels itself on ideas, inspiration, and creating. When I am out of sync it is because I’m not freely creating whatever my mind might have in store that day. Not that I create randomly, but that I allow my imagination to breath so that when it comes time to create, I am ready.

I’ve been so closed off from inspiration this year for many reasons. I can always find an idea at the drop of a hat, but an idea that fulfills me is a whole other thing. I wanted to take time to cultivate that intense creativity while I am on a break from traveling, so for the month of July I am going to create a photo, video and blog post every day.

You might be thinking that creating every day will only stifle my creativity. I tend to agree – forcing creativity can be painful and unfulfilling. For me, giving some constraints with an easy-to-identify end time is a good thing. A month is a short time, and I know I can fully dedicate myself to it. I want to learn how to create better videos and this month will help me. I want to get the ideas out of my head that have been building up, and this will help me. I want to write more and document my days, and this will help me.

Each day certainly won’t yield something great. After all, I’m largely only giving myself mornings to do all of this considering I do still have jobs/tasks/other activities planned. But for each morning, I will dedicate myself entirely to my craft.

This month I will be working on a Creativity Challenge to release at a Pay-What-You-Can price in August in case anyone else wants to try out a challenge like this…assuming I make it through! After all, if I can’t be an example I probably shouldn’t be helping other people along!

Wish me luck, comrades!

And remember…

“There is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.
And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost.”
— Martha Graham

…so create, because our uniqueness is a gift that I believe makes life richer when explored.