Sacred Glass Boxes

Photography has always been a sacred space for me. I don’t think I really understood that at first. I’m not even sure I would have had the words for it. It was just something I picked up soon after my grandpa passed away. At the time, I think I would have called it an interest, maybe a distraction. But looking back, I think it was one of the first places I had to put my grief.

I started taking photos after his funeral, and without quite realizing it, photography became a way for me to take what was happening inside my head and place it somewhere outside of me. It made my emotions feel a little more tangible. I could hold them at a distance. I could look at them. I could make something out of them.

There was something peaceful about taking a photo. Something quiet. I loved being able to sit in an ordinary place (I lived in the rural midwest, so I didn’t have much of a choice), in an ordinary moment, and notice it more fully. The warmth of the sun slipping through breaks in the clouds. The way colors felt more vibrant when I gave myself enough time to actually see them. How the sky can sometimes look like it would taste sweet. The way a patch of grass could move like brushstrokes, long and soft. Like the sound of a deep breath finally leaving your body. 

Photography gave me access to that kind of feeling. That calm. That almost strange sense of safety. For a long time, I think it was one of the only ways I knew how to return to it.

I didn’t realize I was trans until a couple of years ago. Before that, I spent so much of my life moving through spaces where I didn’t feel safe enough to understand that part of myself. Work, family, faith, expectations, all of it. There were so many locked doors inside of me, and I didn’t even know what was behind them. I just knew there were rooms within my internal home where I wasn’t allowed to turn the lights on. Photography gave me just enough courage to inch up the dusty blinds. 

Over time, photography became more than a way to notice beauty. It became a way to encounter emotion without having to fully surrender to it all at once. Behind the viewfinder, I could look at joy. I could look at sadness. I could look at tenderness, fear, grief, love, shame, wonder. I could be present on the other side of that little glass box and let myself feel things that had once felt too scary to approach directly.

That has always carried into the way I edit. I’ve never really edited photos to recreate exactly what something looked like. Reality has never felt like the whole point to me. When I edit, I’m trying to bring out what the moment felt like. The emotional temperature of it. The color of the memory. Sometimes even the feeling I didn’t understand until later.

That part matters to me. Because so much of photography, at least for me, happens after the moment itself. There is a kind of introspection that happens in that process. A quiet renovation of those dark and dusty rooms. And I think, slowly, that helped me begin to see myself.

Which is kind of ridiculous, because I spent so much of my life making sure my more authentic self was never the part of me being seen.

I was always behind the camera. Always the one looking. Always the one framing someone else’s face, someone else’s story, someone else’s emotion. I told myself that was where I belonged. But maybe I was hiding there, too. So I stayed on the safe side of the lens. The side where I had control. The side where I could disappear a little.

It is strange to build so much of your life around vision and still not be able to recognize yourself in the mirror. My job, my art, so much of my identity had been tied to seeing. Capturing what I saw. Telling stories through what I saw. And yet, when I looked at myself, there was a disconnect I couldn’t explain for most of my life.

Until one day, I let myself look differently.

Seeing myself as Autumn for the first time in the mirror was beautiful and terrifying. Both at once. There was joy there, but also fear. Not just fear of the outside world, though that was real. I knew it would cost something. I knew being seen would ask something of me. But the deeper fear was harder to name. Maybe it was the fear of finally recognizing myself. Maybe it was the fear of knowing I could never fully unsee her again.

Photography helped me feel before I could see.

It gave me a place to feel safe before I knew why I didn’t. It gave me a way to hold emotions that once felt too large, too dangerous, too locked away. And slowly, it helped me understand that seeing the world honestly might also mean letting myself be seen.

- Autumn Lynnette