To See and Be Seen
I shoved the curtain aside and called out in my loudest, calmest voice: I NEED SOME HELP IN HERE PLEASE.
My daughter was panicking in the room behind me, her body full-on rejecting the food that she had accidentally ingested. The nurse call button had done nothing to bring help, so my yell into the hallway was a desperate (and successful) attempt to get attention.
I had felt my own body enter Stress like the doorway to a destination, hours earlier, when I first read the dreaded food ingredient on the bar label, after they had eaten it. Everything constricted inside me and refused to let go, as if holding my own breath would help my children breathe easier.
Both of my kids accidentally ate something they were allergic to. A call to 911, a visit from paramedics, a drive to the ED, then separated into two rooms so both kids could get the help they needed.
My body took each new wrinkle like waves hitting me at the beach. Feeling the initial slam of the water, the push and then pull as the wave recedes, taking the steady ground back with it and making me lose my footing just in time for another wave to hit.
I needed something to steady me. I prayed, whispering pleas for healing into my daughter’s hair while nurses scurried around her. I pulled out my phone after they left and the wave receded, snapping photos. I surprised myself and asked my brother to grab my camera and bring it to me at the hospital.
It felt silly but I pulled out my camera and a wide angle lens when the danger was over. I couldn’t help it. I needed to document what was happening.
Picking up my gear, focusing on the technical settings in the harsh overhead light and finding the angle I needed, was exactly what my body needed.
I exhaled for the first time in hours. I felt my heart rate slow.
I needed to remember this, to process it later when it was safe. I needed to show it to others, to say look and have people who weren’t there empathize and see me, and say “Oh, I understand.”
Making photographs is how I process what’s happening in my life. It slows me down and calms my racing thoughts. It’s a defense mechanism, a stress response (fight-flight-freeze-fotograph?), a plea to be seen. A grand attempt to feel less alone in this moment (whatever the moment is). To point and say look, here’s evidence of my life. Here is proof that I lived through this, good or bad. I made it through.
I photograph to see and be seen, to understand and be understood. It’s why I photograph at home, and it’s why I photograph you at your home. I want you to see yourself the way I see you, as a parent doing your best and living through it, good or bad. I want you to be able to hold up the photos we take and say, “Look. See me.” And for others to look and say, “Oh, I understand.”
That’s what pulls my heart toward my camera. It’s what pushes me every day to work on APP. To help one more person document her life and feel seen.
P.S. my kids are fine now. We made it through, learned some hard lessons the easiest way we could, and are grateful to be able to say we lived to tell about it.
