Inspiration through the years 

I sit by the glow of candles this wintery night, thumbing through a 50-cent photo album. I remember seeing the album on a pile of books at a flea market in 2018- cracking open the stiff plastic, petting the fuzzy and bright orange exterior. The weirdest thing ever, but it was mine.

I brought it back to Paris and filled the album to the brim with disposable pictures. I tossed it around carelessly in a backpack while carrying a toddler on my hip. My friends have pinched-up faces in half the photos because I had little regard for flashing their eyes.

I had very little regard for most things when as a nanny. But I wanted to breathe in the cold air on a morning walk and feel life coursing through my limbs. Do something that mattered. And excitement exuded with a 20-dollar film camera in my hand —the zeal of snapping interactions that would otherwise slip away unnoticed. That mattered.

Something wells up inside my chest when I hear a father’s voice crack during his speech at his daughter’s wedding. Watch a mother laugh and wipe her child’s messy face. It wells when I see my grandfather laugh- his face wrinkling the wider the grin—moments that do not belong to me, but my 35mm camera does.

And when I click on that shutter and freeze an emotion in time, my heart wells up even more. My camera is a sketchbook; my eye is a pencil. I thumb to the album’s end and pet the fuzzy orange. The candles glow with my heart.