This is 13

January 2020. My daughter had been wrestling with mental health challenges for over a year at this point. She had just begun taking anti-depressants a few weeks prior, and the side effects were coming in strong. I was grappling with how to manage it all, and struggling with my own (in)abilities to parent the way she needed me to parent. I decided to handle the situation at arms length by photographing my daughter's experience.

I started seeing my daughter, through my lens. I started spending more time with her, photographing her different moods, the cadence of her life. I slowly began to see my daughter for the first time: the little girl she no longer was, the young woman she hadn’t quite yet become, and the human being in between that was struggling to figure out how she fit in this world. And suddenly my project had a focus – documenting her happiness, her sadness, and all the rest of it. So, while my project didn’t really begin as a project but more as a manage my own anxieties and insecurities, it finished (and continues to be) a love story to my daughter, one I hope will allow her to see what the rest of us sees – a vibrant, intelligent, funny, compassionate young lady whose existence brightens my life in ways I never thought imaginable.