About

I seem to know three languages when it comes to personal expression: English, crying, and photography. The latter two work to help articulate when the first fails, which is often.

Photography has served as my more meditative visual form of expression. It is my tears of joy. It is the way I capture the beauty of the people I hold closest to me and my way of visual journaling. While crying offers the candid vulnerability of inner processing, photography allows me to release my love poems into the world. I often create staged portraits of my friends and chosen family, treating image-making as a slow and thoughtful interpretation of seeing myself through them. As a portrait photographer, I use my lens to cry and to smile simultaneously, while looking into the eyes of loved ones. To rejoice while bawling.

Vanessa is an analog portrait photographer based in Brooklyn, NY.