Consequences |LRH|

Chapter 13

Evie

'Photography is about capturing souls, not smiles.'

I could remember picking up my first camera. It was one of those little disposable ones you get from the dollar store that you had to develop the film from. It had a little dial on the back that's scrape the pads of my fingers when I'd turn it. More often than not my brother had to do it but he never complained, he thought it was adorable that I was so excited about getting to take the family photos like an adult.

I remember his face, shock so evident when we got the film developed and I'd captured moments of complete bliss, anger and boredom. I'd gotten photos of nature but the best ones were of nurture. There was one with his head tilted to the sky, the rain just beginning to splatter the cement with droplets and a smile was curved on his lips. Another was of a tourist with an empty look on her face and arms wrapped around her waist. We made up stories for years about her vast look, wondering what it meant. And then there was the one that made my parents take the camera away.

We'd been outside, playing in the pool of the hotel when we heard shouting through the open window. We had been the only ones staying there, the school year still in full swing when both our parents had to go out of town for a meeting and dragged my brother and I with them. We were on the 1st floor with a view of the pool from our window, the curtains open so that our parents could keep an eye on us. It wasn't unusual for them to fight, the spewed venom falling from their lips was just usually kept to a minimum around us. My mother's face was red, my father's lips pursed in his silence as she screamed at him and I'd scrambled from the pool for that tiny little camera.

I'd freeze framed their fight, the one that almost broke them apart I would later learn, but in a single shutter I had frozen that boiling rage. My mother's finger pressed into my father's chest and my father so close to ripping the skin out of the inside of his cheek. The awe my brother's face held was nowhere to be seen on my parents as they ripped the camera away, nosy being a word they used too often to describe me.

They ridiculed the pictures, saying that it wasn't art. They said the pictures were not good, just luck and so I didn't just fall in love with photography- don't get me wrong, there's nothing like getting that just right picture- but now I had something to prove. This wasn't child's play, it was an art form and I was the artist.

I wouldn't change my decision to be a photographer, I wouldn't change the way I decided to be a photographer- half from loving it too much to do anything else, half from spite- because now here I am.

I'm in New York, one of my hands tangled with a cute boy who liked me which was a feat in itself and the other holding onto my camera like a lifeline as we waded through streets crammed with people. And not just any people, all people. L.A. was pretty diverse but it was nothing like New York where people proudly strutted through the streets and sure, slurs could be heard from a few of the whispering tourists but most people were too busy with their own selves to worry about anyone else. And it might have just been my mind that saw the subtleties, the way the sun bathed the dark skin of a woman with light and her bright yellow dress made her face glow. The way a man in a suit held another man's hand as they shuffled on the crosswalk or how a two women were laughing loudly, eating lunch and I could just see their feet tangling underneath the long tablecloth.

I could see cultures, diversity, and kindness in otherwise bleakness when I saw a man hand a woman her purse when she dropped it without a thought. I could see it when a man, beard and all, made his way down the street in a dress with two guys in skinny jeans and a woman approached. They tensed, stepping in front of him a little but she just gave them a shy smile and asked if he was single after asking his pronoun.