junior

This is true and makes me remember things I could not before. This process is healing in that I'm becoming everything I was never allowed to be..

When I found the camera, I'm not sure I understood then or now, how it gives me a voice. I can communicate to others what makes them unique and what their voice is as a DP but when it comes to myself, I can't see me. I mean, it makes sense. I never was seen, and I didn't want to look in the mirror so I would turn the light off and sit on the floor in silence. We didn't have cellphones then. We didn't have social media. We had time, space, and imagination.

I hated the light as a kid so it makes sense why I was afraid of it as an adult when I found the camera. The light made me feel exposed and so did having to handle it in my profession. For my first 9-10 years I didn't use lights. I didn't own lights. I shot everything the way it was. I didn't have a community or film buddies or people that looked up to me. I was alone but I had this technology in my hands, around my neck that made people look at me, and ask me for my opinions, to share my imaginations, and they shared theirs back. I was like a kid at a friends birthday party I guess, I didn't do those things either. I didn't have friends outside of school. For my first 7 years I was alone, I had a cousin who I seen at my grandma's during the day when I wasn't at school in the summer but that was it.