Doesn’t that sound like magic? It has always felt like magic to me. I look back over the last 17 years of being a photographer and realize that it was not just the feeling of a camera in my hand, but the knowledge that in that little black box magic could happen. That magic is the thing that I fell in love with.

In my time, I have photographed people young and old, places around the world, bath towels and baby bibs, solid gold and once even an original Rembrandt. I have used new cameras and old cameras, strobe lights and natural light. I have developed my own film and watched in the darkroom as deep, beautiful eyes appeared on a blank piece of paper. And what I’ve learned more than anything, is that the camera doesn’t matter.

Cameras are tools - paint brushes, instruments, pencils. They are the elements. Only when cameras and lights are combined in a unique way through the artistic of a human can they create something new. But alone they can do nothing. What’s more important than anything is the experience that is happening when the photograph is being made - It is the groom turning his head to see his bride for the first time. It is the silence of the nursery while a new mother holds her baby. It is that last time a great grandmother will ever smile at her great granddaughter in this life. Those are the magic moments - the human chemicals thick in the air that develop into a beautiful image.

Those are the moments I am here for.

Photography is a love language.

I can say I love you. Or I can photograph you with love. A small square image can tell the stories that our language limits. That’s why I work by the motto “Photographing Truth”.

I don’t get to play God that way. I don’t get to manipulate, photoshop, or commercialize something that’s already beautiful. My only focus is to take the truth of a moment and hold space for it within my lens.

Forever yours,

xo, Catherine