This fall I was honored to receive the New Directions Career Center’s 2019 Outstanding Volunteer Award. For the past couple years I’ve volunteered at NDCC in downtown Columbus to photograph their program attendees, giving each graduate a headshot they can use in social media posts & LinkedIn profiles.
Originally founded in 1980 as a program for displaced homemakers, New Directions evolved to provide career counseling and related services to women entering or reentering the workplace. NDCC’s mission goes much deeper than its program offerings to help each woman realize her true potential and self-worth.
Every woman who walks through NDCC’s doors has a different background and story to tell, but strength and courage connect them all. Deciding to make a huge change in your life, to step into the unknown and take a chance on something you’re not sure of— that’s no small thing.
At the awards dinner I gave a short speech about what photographing there makes me think about, and I wanted to share that here.
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THE LANDSCAPE OF OUR SKIN
for the 2019 NDCC Volunteer Appreciation Night
Why are we so hard on ourselves? When I was a teenager I worried about my big nose, my pimples, my very tiny boobs. Now that I’m near to fifty I’m worrying about crepe-y neck skin and wrinkles—the kind that show even when you’re not laughing. At the moment I am even missing a tooth.
A few years ago I began photographing New Directions program graduates as a way to give them an image for Linkedin & social media profiles. Or even just to have as a “Yes I did this important thing for myself” memento. I use natural window light and the career center’s blue-grey wall as a backdrop. They’re pretty straightforward headshots— there isn’t time to get creative.
I retouch them a little bit, because I know I would appreciate this myself. Removing a blemish is an easy decision, but for women with scars or a bruise; or moles, birthmarks and bumps that have been part of the landscape of their skin for their entire lives, I pause. I want to ask, “What would you like me to do? Do you carry this mark proudly? Or would you prefer I erase it?” I don’t know yet how to have this conversation with a stranger in thirty seconds before I focus my lens and let her know I’ll count to three.
Normally I don’t show people the back of the camera after taking their photo, but sometimes I get excited by someone’s great smile or expression and I let them peek. “Oh no!” someone has said more than once. “That looks like my drivers’ license photo!” I cringe. I want her to see what I see. I tell her that her driver’s license photo must be fabulous.
Our relationship with our appearance is complicated, and seems to have gotten more so in the age of selfies, Instagram, and soft-focus filters. But, ladies, let’s not erase our entire selves. We are beautiful.
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learn more about the New Directions Career Center at their website,
www.newdirectionscc.org