A Shift of the Light
Written: December 5, 2024
This was created as both a short creative non-fiction and as a video presentation with the story. All of the photos in the video are photos either of me or ones that I took over the years since I was 15 years old.
I have laid out this page to show the video hybrid first, then the script (story) and a short reflection of why I chose this medium.
Academic Papers
It started with a toad at the Toronto Zoo.
Sitting on a vibrant, dark green leaf behind the glass of a small enclosure the size of a small cupboard. I squatted before him as my family and others moved on to larger things that caused murmurs of awe to drift over my head as I stared at the toad. He stared back, unimpressed with his view…but I knew him…a little thing often overlooked, forgotten, misunderstood. Something that didn’t sparkle for the world to see as he sat in his own little corner to watch a world that didn’t care.
But I saw him…and he saw me as I looked through the camera lens and realized that here is a patron soul who may understand what it had been like for me, small and quiet, sitting in my corner, avoiding the adults in my life while still yearning to be drawn into the bustle of the world.
Click…I captured him…just once as my kids squealed in delight and called me to another animal that was larger, bolder…a vibrant star that everyone was taking notice of. It started with that toad.
But not really…
Camera flashes marked the big events, a smiling child that fit into the life she’d been set to. Laughing, happy, eyes sparkling with no worry. Content.
But it didn’t last. Before I was even five, violence had shattered that contentment and gave me the knowledge, much too young, that life wasn’t an abundance of light. It was a shift that kept growing darker with each year.
Each film of violence laid over me, dulled the edges of my smile, cast shadows in my eyes and I found my small corner…turning into it. Hoping that the bright flashes of the camera would capture the despair within my eyes, notice the way my fist remained clenched, my lips tight, finally acknowledging that I, in my turmoil, had been seen.
Click…click…click…the light of the flash was blinding until all I could see was the darkness around me.
Then I found a camera…was gifted it through a weird chance of fate and I found a new vantage point—a shift of light. No longer in the center of that blinding violence…turning the lens out into the world, I could see some light bleeding in…making the black first gray and then fading into muted colours for me to display.
I found myself gazing at the ocean. My camera in hand as I focused on rocks that had been carved from the land, large boulders reminding me of all the pain my body had entertained. I gazed through the lens, the muted colors not capturing the blue of the sky as I realized I could swim out past the rocks and allow the Pacific to catch me up into her tendrils and pull me out into her depths. I gazed at the future of darkness before me aware of the darkness behind, waiting for me at home.
Click…I captured her grace and the urge to swim into her depths, away from everything, was lifted. The camera’s viewfinder seeing new vistas that could be so many things beyond what I already knew.
And it was like stepping out from a storm where the clouds clutched at the great expanse, but the light begins to trickle down. Starting first in the heavens, almost too far to reach its warmth, without it touching any of the dark land my feet press against.
Then it spread into a fog that was a shift of the light, something I could feel against my skin but wasn’t as heavy as the dark film before. And while it might be lonely, there were people there—in the fog—willing to help pull me into the warmth of the sunlight.
The land was still frozen by the fear that these images were not real…not things I’d seen and felt but only dreamt about under the dark slide of the film that had covered me before. But I breathed in the cold air and found beauty in the jagged edges left behind by the winter storm that had been my childhood…and frost clung to my world, but it wasn’t scary anymore. Instead, it breathed itself into green fields and newness of spring…into something more…into hope.
Where dangers didn’t lurk in the shadows but allowed me to marvel at them and I began to see laughter in the images I captured. And I found new vistas to gaze from as I learned that every image immortalized by my lens was a reminder that even those who’ve been touched by violence could find such beauty in a moment, a frozen piece of time, my vantage point afforded me the ability to take it in…to celebrate…
To have silly moments where laughter shook the camera as I tried to be more serious than my subject.
To have hope that I could find serenity in a floating flower,
Grace in a dancing butterfly
Love within a cat’s eye…
To be something more than all the terrible things that caused jagged edges in me.
I found within myself a kaleidoscope of light.
Click…
But it started with that toad, where I realized that I could be so much more than something small, and scared, and alone in a little corner. I could be a shift of light.
Explanation of the Piece:
I chose to do this personal essay with the attached video production because it, truly, started with the toad. I had captured that photograph years ago and it is one of my favourite photographs that I’d taken. However, in looking at the image and trying to apply it to space and time, it became the center of that space to breathe in and come to terms with both my childhood of trauma and how it is situated within me.
The toad, after taking the photo, has been my profile photo for social media for many years and that is why I both started and ended with the toad. I thought about ending with a photo of myself as, after many years of avoiding the front of the camera, I am more comfortable with it, but the focus was for me shifting the focus of the lens both internally and externally. As I don’t have any selfies, I felt that it detracted from the message the essay was portraying.
All of the photos where I am not in the photograph are ones that I have captured over the years. I matched some of my favourite compositions with the flow of the essay while still holding true to the message within it.
The elements come together to show a snapshot of who I am as it is captured in both the photos from my childhood and photos that I have taken. I started with the toad being a clear picture because he is central. When I shifted to the first three photos of me from the age of 10 months old to 3 years old, I focused on photos that showed the happiness but many were centered around big events, such as my 2nd birthday, with my adopted sister who is 4 years older than me to the day, and the image of me waving was at Christmas when I was 3. The shattering glass over those images of a happy little girl was to signify the violence that became a part of my every day life at the age of 4. I had originally wanted to use a dark paint splash, but it was too reminiscent of blood and I felt it was too jarring.
The film sliding over the photos after the shattering violence was to depict how my life was growing darker and darker with each year of childhood abuse that I lived through. I chose not to do a photo from each year because of time constraints and because I didn’t want to stay focused on that darkness, instead, creating a shift of the light. However, I wanted to stress how photos were taken constantly and, yet, no one saw the fading smile of an unhappy child. I ended on a photo of when I was 16 and had become terrified of being caught on film because I could no longer hide the pain I was experiencing.
The dog and peacock were some of my early photographs that showed my inexperience but that I was starting to see the world from a different vantage point.
The beach was one of the first photos I took when I was about 16 years old, and I had thought about ending my life before I took the photo. It was one of the first photos that allowed me to fall in love with the process of photography and the hope it could bring.
Finally, the remaining photos have all been taken over the years as I became an amateur photographer and found a place of healing through the photographs that I took. I allowed the images to remain bright, so it showcased the positivity of the process, even through the low points.
I chose to use sound effects throughout the video to add a depth of layer to the experience and would, hopefully, draw the reader/viewer into the emotions at play in the essay.
And finally, the toad, my pensive little toad that has brought me joy ever since that little family trip to the Toronto Zoo.