The Photographer’s Photographer

A piece I wrote for Lateral Magazine’s “On Love”!

There's a certain happiness to being a portrait photographer- it's powerful to make people feel seen, to make them feel beautiful in all of their ways. It's powerful to freeze in time a smile, a laugh, a memory onto a picture, as if to certify its existence to the viewer. That's why she fell in love with photography. This photographer captured what she saw and she saw beauty. Except in herself, of course- that's why she stayed behind the camera. No one asked to take pictures of photographers anyways, and she didn't mind.

But he almost changed her mind. He made her feel seen and beautiful in all of her ways. He captured her words and remembered every little detail of them. He studied her like a picture and called her beautiful. He touched her heart with the moments they captured together. On top of so many other beautiful things about him, that's why she fell in love with him. He was the photographer's photographer.

Days spent in a blissful, euphoric calm. Days filled with sparks, banana bread, and sunflowers. Days sitting together and talking as the sun sank and the moon hung in the sky. Days that rang with laughter and joyous tears. It was picture-perfect, but pictures are only worth a thousand words.

When they decided to part ways, on a cool night watching on the roof as the summer sun set, he embraced her one last time and said he loved her. She said it right back without even a hesitation, because she had always known and would whisper it to him even when he couldn't hear her. As they clung onto each other that night, they both knew they had reached the end of the roll, and it was time to move on.

The worst pain of closing this chapter were the thoughts of doubt and rejection that replaced the pureness of it all. To force herself to move on, she deliberately tarnished the memories they shared together, blaming him for her wound-up heart that he shot and shattered into thirds. Wishing she could tell him how fiercely she had loved him but was too afraid to tell him. Wondering whether those three words he said were fabricated to make her fall in love with him so she would write about him. Now she sits clutching the crumpled memories, tortured by her thoughts, waiting for time to heal her. And it did.

They said no one forgets their first love, and now she knew why. Ever since he came and went, she saw a different person in the mirror. For all the moments she loved him, she learned to love herself. For all the moments she loved him, he showed her that she could see beauty in herself and that she was able to love fiercely in a way she didn’t even know she was capable of. Though time heals all wounds, a piece of him will always stay with her that she will carry in her heart, just as she carries her camera.

So she silently accepts his parting gift, picks up her camera, and moves on to the next adventure. Sometimes, hearts need some weight to fall into the right place.

Or at least, that's how she hopes the story ends.

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