What stayed with me after that shoot wasn’t the photos...
It was the realisation of how much we carry with us.
How something someone said years ago, often when we were young, often without thinking, can quietly become the way we see ourselves.
We take those words and, without realising it, we start repeating them. Over time they stop sounding like someone else’s opinion and start sounding like truth. Like a fact.
We build a whole reality around them.
We avoid certain angles, certain light, certain versions of ourselves.
We learn how to adapt and hide parts we were told were wrong, ugly, imperfect... too out there, different...
And yet, during this shoot, the images she asked me not to take, the ones from her so called “bad side”, were the ones she loved the most.
She paused on them.
She smiled.
She chose them.
That moment stayed with me because it reminded me how often the things we think are wrong with us were never ours to begin with.
Sometimes all it takes is being seen without judgement, just for a moment, for a different truth to land.
And sometimes, that moment is enough to change how we see ourselves.
With all my love,
Nami ✨
