I’m in a small room in India – West Bengal. Outside the horns are blowing like crows, attacking. People are yelling down the street, their voices drowning together, indecipherable. This is a place that envelopes me the moment I step foot outside the airport, but it challenges me, too. The sounds, the people, the food, the smells, the stories. The stories.

When I listen closely through the mountainous shouts I hear cross-sections of lives; one man tells another to be careful crossing the street, not through his words, but through his body language. A woman kisses her child while a hundred people push past her, tenderness going unnoticed.

In my workshop I’m teaching self-expression through photography and movement, aided by Kolkata Sanved. The young women that sit in the room with me have pasts that I cannot imagine. I try, but it feels wrong to imagine my life with the same difficulties; disrespectful, somehow. I am ill-equipped to feel what they feel, at least precisely. My life has been vastly different and that shows in every minutiae when I travel in India. In the ways that I get irritated by people bumping into me, when I feel exhausted by the crowds, and especially when I feel trapped by the buildings and pollution. That is life here, though, and I am unaccustomed, even after five years of coming.

Today in the workshop we are learning storytelling. I explain why this is important –  because, after all, their story is theirs. It is for them to tell, not me. I never felt comfortable photographing people whose lives have been so uniquely different from mine, using my way of telling stories to tell theirs. This is for them to share. Instead, I teach storytelling. I teach how to use a camera. I teach self-portraiture. I teach them how to tell their own stories.

And so they do, effortlessly.

Because storytelling is the culture here. This is a place where stories pile on top of stories so that every object, every location, is imbued with the deepest stories.

Even more than stories, though, is the hope that permeates.

I’m in the Kolkata Sanved office and day one of my workshop is almost over. We are talking about our stories, but not in literal terms. I never, ever ask someone to share their past. Instead, we speak in symbols, in emotions. I ask them to bring me an object that represents their past. We learn symbolism in art.

They bring me water, as a symbol for constantly moving. They bring me a rock, a symbol for heaviness. They bring me a dead tree, a symbol unto itself. A box, to show entrapment. A match, to show danger.

We photograph those objects, and they learn the camera.

I ask them to choose an emotion that represents how they feel now that they have had education, now that they have found safety. Shanti, they say: peace. Aasha: hope. Curiosity. Learning. Happy.

As I listen to them sharing a symbol from their past, I do not have to use a lot of imagination to understand where they come from: darkness to light. The story is there, the details are not important for me to hear.

As I hear them share their emotions, representing who they are now, I see the shift from sadness to joy.

Everyone that I meet here is so open.

YES, I have had hardship. BUT, now I am free.

This is not true for so many. This is why the power of self-expression is so vital. When we give voices to those who feel they cannot speak they realize that their story matters.

It breaks me to think about how many people are living in poverty, enslavement, abuse, and more. How can we help them? I don’t know, myself. It is a problem the world may still be trying to solve a thousand years in the future. But, how can we help those who have been rescued, who have come out the other side? How can we heal them, give them strength, hope, determination? Empowerment. Education.

We give them a tool to tell their story. Because, so many – too many – have had their stories taken from them. Here, in this workshop, we try to give it back.

I have done many of these workshops over the past five years. Always, they say the same: we have come from ash and we have rebuilt ourselves. They tried to break us but we would not be broken.

There is hope. There is always hope.

This is a culture of light. Where there is darkness, light permeates.

I show them a camera. I show them a window. I show them a dark stairwell. The choice is theirs. Always, the image is the same: we reach toward the light.

They take their self-portraits. “Represent your dream for your future in a single image”, I tell them. A heavy thing to portray. They have never taken pictures before. And yet – beauty, hope, determination. The word of this workshop is: POWER.

“I am powerful!” one girl shouts as she takes her self-portrait.
“I am confident!” another girl says as she poses.
And finally, at the end, someone says: “I have learned how to tell my story. This is my story to tell.”

It is a culture of light.

And, can’t we all use that? No matter where you are right now, remember the beauty I have seen here. I need you to see it with me. I need you to feel this. The light demands it. Their stories demand it.

Will you try to reach for the light,
even when it is difficult?

1. What do you consider to be ethical storytelling?
2. How do you prefer to tell your own story?

—

I am currently in India teaching self-expression workshops to underprivileged communities. These workshops were developed by myself, Blossomy Projects, and Kolkata Sanved to blend movement with photography. I travel here to Kolkata, India once a year to help end gender-based violence and aid in the education and empowerment of those effected.

I am leaving for Sri Lanka in the morning to continue this work before returning home on February 2nd.

The STORY

A year ago I traveled to France to shoot in the most spectacular location I had ever seen. I got there, concepts planned, props in hand, and I shot all day long, for hours and hours straight. I took the images home, proud of what I had done, and yet I had no desire to edit them. The longer I waited the more I came to terms with the fact that I would never edit them. They had lost their magic. They weren’t as special as I thought they were. They were complicated and the lighting wasn’t right, and I felt really down about it. I could have edited them and I could have created something from what I had, but I knew that I was going to go back, and so I didn’t touch them.

A couple of months ago I did have the chance to go back. I went in with an idea but didn’t put too much pressure on myself to do what I had sketched out. Instead, I helped other people shoot throughout the day and contented myself with enjoying the moments I shared with my friends. At some point in the day someone found a dead bird. I went to the attic where the bird was resting and I sat with it for a long while. I pleaded with someone to let the bird stay where it was for a time. The truth was that I wasn’t finished with it. I have a very deep and sincere connection to animals and death, two things one wouldn’t normally pair together, and I am inspired by separately. But put together, I become overwhelmed with emotion – and inspiration.

I find beauty in death, light in darkness, and inspiration in the macabre. This is how it has always been. I embrace it. It makes me who I am. And so I found beauty and inspiration in that tiny bird and what it meant to me, in my life, at that time. To me, inspiration is how we most authentically manifest our truest self. It is why we create. I took that little bird with me throughout the day, carrying him as I looked for locations to create self-portraits, while coming up with a narrative for him, and for myself.

I challenged myself that day. I went into the chateau with ideas in mind that were safe and easy and would guarantee results from the shoot. But when it came time to shoot, I didn’t do what was safe or easy for me. I did several things that I almost never do, as a rule for myself. I shot directly at light sources. I shot in harsh light. I didn’t overcomplicate the work with a lot of Photoshop or heavy editing. I kept it simple, posed how I felt, and embraced the emotion of the day. It felt right. It felt respectful, in a way, for my little co-character. It was all perfect, no worries and massive inspiration. At the end of the day my friend asked if I had anything solid to take away from my shoot. I said I had no idea, and I didn’t…and I didn’t care. It felt wonderful to do what makes my heart soar, to try something new, and to connect with my deepest inspiration.

The TECHNIQUE

While shooting each of these images, I exposed for my skin tone. Because I was so often shooting at a light source, that meant that windows were blown out and the surroundings were bright in order to see detail in my skin and dress. I shot each image underexposed as well, so that everything but the light source fell into darkness. While putting the images together, I used a manual HDR type of stitching process, matching up the darkened window with the nicely exposed images and combining them.

In Photoshop, I spent a lot of time refining the light. In each image, I identified the light source, chose how soft I wanted the light to be and began to create softer light coming from those sources by adjusting my curves layer like this:

I added vignettes to each of the images to make the light stand our more.

I spent a good deal of time selectively changing colors. For example, in the image with the red floor, I had to selectively enhance the color of the floor. It was naturally orange/pink, so I made it a more uniform color and enhanced the darkness and saturation of the red tones. In others I selected the dress to change or enhance the color, and in others still I selected walls/doors to change colors.

To finish each image I softened them to give a more painterly look, since the light spoke to me as being like something from a classic painting.

The CONCEPT

When I found the bird, I wanted to create a small series that would honor his life while also speaking about the fragility of life and how heavy death can feel. The first image I created was the one where I’m standing next to the large feather. In it, I wanted to show how small we can feel around death, and how looming it can be. In a way, we shield ourselves from death so that we can experience life, but it is only when we accept our imminent demise that we can appreciate the impact our life can have.

The second image I created was the one laying down with the bird on the floor. I really pushed myself with this one and the lighting, but I felt it was important because that particular lighting spoke to me about fragility. It seemed so perfect, with the way it raked across the subject and bird, highlighting the shape and form of the lifeless pair. I wanted to pose like the bird, solemn and asleep, eternally or not, to embody the beauty in death.

The third image I went about creating was the white feather on my back. I posed in that space first sitting up and realized quickly that the light would not allow for such a pose, with it being so directional and harsh. That was when I decided to take a concept I had planned for a different room and try it out here. To show the weight of death (and life) was something that was important to me. Death weighs heavy on us all, whether it is thinking of our own or dealing with that of a loved one. All of these images speak to both instances.

The fourth image was taken in the room with the red floor and black dress. I wanted to dress in mourning, yet also like a blackbird – ominous and strong at the same time. Foreshadowing death perhaps, or mourning someone’s life, was what I was thinking of when creating this image. When I started editing I was thrilled with how stark of a contrast it presented in color and light, and I thought that appropriate in such a dark image.

The fifth picture was the one on the bed, looking up at the feather. To me, death feels like a dream – it is something we consider but cannot imagine, something we dream of but cannot feel, and something that is, often, better not to think on. I personally struggle with many dreams of death and darkness, and this felt an appropriate connection for me, visually, to the theme at hand.

The sixth picture was meaningful to me because of a memory I have. When my grandmother died I remember lying on a set of stairs, I couldn’t even say where now, and looking backward out the window, feeling the light on my face, and wondering if it was my grandmother touching my face. I saw these stairs and the light shining down and wanted to create an image in that fashion, looking toward the light with the little bird in my hands, as if offering him up to the light. All of these images deal with light and darkness in a literal and metaphoric way.

I hope that you can find something in one of the images that speaks to you.

She is filled with heaviness
like rain water sitting on a window sill,
cracked wood, fogged glass, unseen.

She is filled with heaviness
like autumn leaves under a long winter snow,
waiting for the melt to breathe again.

She is filled with heaviness
like a small dead bird filled with worms,
under the weight of a feather.

Share with me a series you’ve done, or a theme you are connected to.
Remember to never apologize for what makes you unique.
It is, indeed, what makes you so wonderful.

Do not allow yourself to be defined by where you are now, but instead by where you are going.

The journey is dark, yet when a shining light brightens a dark room it seems more powerful than the same light added to a bright room.

Any light, no matter how dim, will guide you through the darkness.

When you realize that light must come from within, not from those who may walk beside you, you are infinitely powerful.

We possess the strength to move forward, try harder, dream bigger, and do the things we wish for.