LEARNING TO LOVE MYSELF

When I was 12 years old, I discovered my grandfather’s Polaroid camera. I would walk around the neighborhood for hours, taking photos until I ran out of film. That’s when I put some film into a 35mm camera and fell even more in love with photography. I still remember the first roll of film I shot—because I ruined it. My grandfather told me, “Now when you’re done, we’ll reroll it and then we can develop it.” So after I’d taken the 24th photograph, I popped the back open and tried to roll it back up by hand, exposing the images to the light. I cried about