Stories without words

I’m not quite sure when I fell in love with photography.

But I know that before I fell in love with it, I was introduced to it.

I was probably 10 or 11, when a family friend handed me her big DSLR (what trust!) while we were visiting her and her little newborn.

She was known for that camera. It was always there, documenting our visits and those cheeky infant smiles. And with no hovering or “be carefuls,” she put that camera — a bona fide paperweight — in my hands. It was the simplest, sweetest act — she let me look through the lens, and capture those posed portraits, those baby-holding candids, and all the moments in between.

It isn’t just the act of picture-taking that I love — I love any picture that makes me feel.

My favorite exhibit at the now-defunct Newseum was the Pulitzer Prize photography exhibit, and I’d spend hours in there reading the story behind every picture.

Growing up, I kept a running Word document of links to photo essays that documented terrible and great history, or just the simple ordinary pleasure of a summer New York Saturday.

I love capturing life in motion — the stranger biking by, the woman lugging her milk and eggs, the businessman commuting home so he can finally shrug off that shirt and suit.

Maybe it’s more accurate to say that I love life itself. The vibrancy and brutality and beauty and brokenness of it all.

I think of the song —

Heaven is everywhere.

Can’t you see it? Can’t you feel it?

Today, I’m not seeking to become a professional photographer. But I do love the gift of it.

I love capturing my family, and how my heart swells when I look back on pictures of them. I love snapping pictures of them when they’re not looking, when they’re laughing at each other (or maybe just at me).

I love the nostalgia a picture can hold — that I can see it, and it takes me right back to that moment. I love the gift it brings me on a random Monday night, spinning through my archive and landing on that one timeless frame.

And I long for the moments that I’ve yet to capture in life — the celebrations to come, the families to be grown, the places to visit. And when I think of them, I think of the delight and the love and adventure all wrapped up in picture form, with me behind the lens.

Isn’t that the gift of it? Isn’t that what photography is meant to do?

To make you feel something?

Low key also like to make family videos (not a videographer) and then watch them over and over again like they are an Oscar-winning short film. See here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/p27jc80w4qiimyk/Switz%202021.mp4?dl=0