Laura’s Story Session: Scars Out

These Story Sessions are always such a powerful and vulnerable experience for our clients. It’s incredible to watch someone unfold and open up in front of the camera in such a meaningful way. This Story Session with Laura was no exception. Laura wanted to have this “Scars Out” photoshoot to capture the whole beauty of her scars, herself, and her journey with self love. Ashley was so honored to aid in this intimate portrait of her journey and is so excited for you to see what they created together! Also, Laura being the talented writer that she is, was kind enough to share about her experience with us in her own words below. Shew! Be prepared to be moved, y'all!Reflections on the Scars Out Photo ShootBy: Laura BessI think what astonished me the most was how normal it felt, how easy it felt. Certainly there were moments, like when the neighbors were around working in their yards, when I had what I would call an out of body experience. Those were the moments when reality would come crashing in, the reality of the oddness of what I was doing. I hired someone to come down here and point a camera at me. In those brief moments I felt narcissistic and ridiculous, with the added layer of me laying in my yard in my underwear with a person pointing a camera at me.Of me dancing with a tree, In my yard, In broad daylight, In my underwear. I had paid a whole other person, not just to observe it, but to document it. To point an inanimate object at me so I could save this moment for posterity. The real thing that surprised me, however, outside of those few moments, was the normalness of it.Normal in two ways:

1. It felt the way it feels on any other artistic project I collaborate on. However, because I was the only person involved in the performative aspect of it, and because the project was FOR ME, the pressure that I normally feel as a performer was gone. I’ve had photo shoots for headshots before, and have never had a good time, most likely because those photos have to stand-in as my professional avatar, and that’s a lot of pressure. Mostly, though, it felt like a creative project because of my collaborator. Ashley bought into this project big time. She is a rad artist who loves collaboration. It was a project we were both invested in. She also made me feel totally comfortable.
2. In my head a “Scars Out” photo shoot was a big deal, something I had been wanting to do for over a year. In my head each shot was going to be about “how do we get cool shots with the scars in them?” In reality, it was just taking pictures of me. I just had to wear slightly less clothing than I normally wear and then the scars were visible. My different ability was visible. So then the pictures just became shots of me. It’s just me. That’s all I kept thinking whenever Ashley showed me the display on the back of her camera so I could see what she was capturing. It was this shocking softness. This tender yet stunning realization: “Oh. That’s just me. That’s just a picture of me.” 

Somehow facing my scars head on like that meant POOF - this isn’t big and scary. It’s just me. Yes, there were conversations about certain shots: “Do you want to turn a certain way so this scar is visible?” However, those conversations were about not hiding, not about effortfully trying to shove them front and center. In the end, most of our conversations sounded like this:  “Where is the sun most magical?“I love this tree!  How can we use it?” “What would happen if we did this?” The conversations were about wardrobe and “what’s my hair doing?” It was just incredibly normal.Even the big girl aspect of it — because I am a thicc woman. The point of this was to not hide ANYTHING — skin out, scars out, no hiding. I was just as nervous about taking these pictures as a curvy woman as I was about showing my scars.  I’d look in that camera display, however, and just see…Me.  I’d see beauty as me. I was so scared of showing all of this, but I looked at the images of me she had captured and I’d just seen a beautiful woman. Just a woman. A woman who looked utterly and marvelously exactly the way she was supposed to look. The big scary fat monster, the little green worm monster, the monster I thought I was? She wasn’t there. Just POOF — she went away and I was left with this beautiful serene woman who I had always wanted to be only to realize I already was her.I wish I had the words to express how revolutionary that was. This thing, these things, I have held back and hidden? They were just a small, normal aspect of the magnitude of the glory of me.They were not abnormal.And I was already whole and always had been. Which brings me back to the importance of self love.Ashley took the photos at my friend’s wedding, and those pictures are some of my favorite photos ever taken of me and my group of friends. We are having a great time in those pictures and there’s so much love in them. Although, the first time I saw the pictures I was looking for my scars. I was wearing a knee length dress, and I knew my scars were out. I was looking to see how bad it looked. I was looking to see if they somehow had ruined my friend’s wedding pictures, if my scars somehow overshadowed everything else that happened that day, or if they somehow cast a shadow over the glowing bride. I don’t think about them now when I look at those pictures, I just see my friends beaming out at me. But I did then. Now, almost a decade later, I asked the same woman who took those pictures to come take pictures of me on purpose to show my scars. There’s a beautiful symmetry to that. Now when I look at the pictures this incredibly talented woman has taken of me, on purpose to show those scars, all I can see is how beautiful I am. All I can see is what a gorgeous composition Ashley has put together, and I’m so overwhelmed by the wholeness of the images that whether or not my scars are in them doesn’t even register to me.I turned the camera on the monsters and the monsters are gone.I’m not trying to say that all my issues are suddenly healed, and I now have no more self-esteem struggles. There is, however,  an acceptance. A powerful acceptance, an unashamedness, a wholeness that wasn’t there before. Now, when I falter, I have a whole bunch of beautiful pictures to point to and say “See? You’re not a big scary monster. You’re beautiful.”I definitely have a lot of stuff left to face, left to work on. The work just feels more tender now.I feel like I am knocking on the cages of my heart,breaking them down,one by one.