2024 In Photos: Beautifully Gutted

If I could describe this year in two words, it would be,

“Beautifully gutting”

I’ve lost a lot of things, left a lot of things, and learned a lot of things. Ideals and reality are interesting neighbors. It’s been incredible, eyeopening, healing, refining, and some pursuits I dropped a decade ago fell into my lap seemingly overnight. It’s also been stressful, horrendous, heartbreaking, and graced with a pile of medical debt, questions, wandering, wondering, frustrated journal words chicken scratched onto journal pages, and sometimes, no words to express at all. God has felt like a distant concept whose phone always goes to voicemail at some points. And other times, I’ve experienced Him in such profoundly fascinating ways that logic and science feel defied.

Life has felt hellish and life has felt Sacred. Life has been and is very “Ecclesiastes”.

It’s funny how you assume your life will look a certain way and feel a certain way, and everything is romanticized when things feel ambitious and good. Reality has a painfully strange way of putting things in perspective. It can feel quite cruel when you’re floating in the clouds and suddenly, just like that, it’s as if a pair of cold hands yank your ankles back down to a cold, hard floor.

Yet, the darkness is where beauty is often born. I joke that my best writings and artistic pursuits are when my mental health plummets and dead philosophers feel like my best friends. That’s when people love me most. They see this pretty, shiny thing and creation, but not the prelude of inner wounds, existential crisis, clumps of hair on the carpet from stress, and ugliest, unfiltered, unattractive version of oneself.

I took an afternoon walk to an art gallery downtown one day, and connected with the kindest painter. As I admired her wall of paintings, the colors so profound, it was like staring into a dream, she said something that resonated. She spoke quietly and looked to the side, almost holding back tears,

“People come in, look at my paintings, talk about how beautiful they are, buy the most beautiful piece, and walk out with it. What they don’t know is the amount of pain that went into creating what they see as so beautiful.”

Seeing beauty in the connectedness and humanness of others through my lens feels much the same. Art is a lifeline. Truthfully, I still feel like I’m processing 2024. Reflecting on all its images, be it my less than mediocre iPhone snaps or professional images, makes me nostalgic.

I ran a marathon, co-hosted a podcast, lived by myself for a year, visited Central America, began Russian language learning, hosted a language exchange partner I’d only known a month prior, acted in a short film, watched said short film on the cinematic big screen for the first ever time, participated in an Argentine Tango event, deleted my social media for seven months, had an existential crisis (kinda), quit drinking alcohol, quit drinking caffeine, rehabbed a gnarly run injury (surely not from running a marathon two weeks after running a marathon), learned to savor road biking (almost) as much as running, threw myself into the arts scene with the same ambition as I did as a seventeen year old, and just returned from the most magical NYE wedding of a teenage blogger friend, turned real life soul sister.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. That’s not even the front page of the good, the bad, the ugly. It feels like reliving a season in a weird sort of way. But, my cup runneth over.

Photographically, I shot my last wedding before retiring my collections (bittersweet!), transitioned to lifestyle/editorial work, still have a crush on black & white, and just signed with an amazing Triad photographer as part of his team. I am still banking on him booking an elopement or wedding in Europe or Southeast Asia.

NYE wedding cheers

2024 in phone snaps

As this year comes to a close and a new one begins, I want to be as healthy as possible (physically, spiritually, mentally). I want to write more, read more, create more, collaborate more. I want to visit Southeast Asia and its beautiful culture and reconnect with my foreign friends across the Atlantic. I want to continue breaking limiting beliefs and old, unnecessary patterns. I want to master Argentine Tango. So maybe, I should visit Buenos Aires too.

I want to shoot film more than digital. I want to be less facaded and more authentic, even if it means people dislike my true voice, values, what I have to say, what I create. I want to savor the present and love what’s right in front of me, who is right in front of me, what’s already been given to me, and not wish away anything…even the pain within a challenge. I want to push societal boundaries, status quo, cultural norms, and be braver. I want to be soft and strong.

I want to go against the grain, yet still find inner peace when I am disliked, unvalidated (Biggest life lesson of 2024: Validation is an inward self trust and insatiable void finding it elsewhere), or my values, moral compass, and opinions are disapproved of by other subjective opinions (Biggest life lesson of 2024 pt. ii: Everyone’s thoughts are their own, subjective experience and do not automatically equate to the truth of you.) I want to exist in Love and understand God more. I don’t want to be a coward. I don’t want to live on autopilot.

And I want to push the boundaries in art as much as possible.

Photography is my “Broken Hallelujah,”

…Or at least, one form of it. I hope you enjoy some of the lovely faces, happenings, and emotions from this year. May beauty, bravery, and freedom find you in 2025.