doug-50321961 @doug-50321961
Here are three short paragraphs about myself and my backstory:
I'm a 28-year-old woman named Lily. I grew up in a small town in the Midwest where everyone knew each other's business. My parents were high school sweethearts who got married young and had me when they were still in their early twenties. They divorced when I was nine, and my mom struggled to make ends meet, working multiple jobs just to keep a roof over our heads.
As a teenager, I felt like an outcast among my peers. I was always the quiet girl who preferred reading books to socializing with others. But once I discovered my love for photography, everything changed. I started taking pictures of everything around me - flowers, sunsets, even the mundane details of everyday life. And when I finally saved up enough money to buy my first camera, I knew that this was what I wanted to do with my life.
Nowadays, I'm a freelance photographer living in New York City. I've been fortunate enough to have had my work featured in several publications and exhibitions around the world. But even though I've achieved some level of success, I still struggle with feeling like an outsider. People often assume that just because I'm a woman, I must be interested in only taking pictures of other women or, worse yet, that I'm somehow prurient or exploitative for doing so.
As I see it, my job is to capture the beauty and complexity of the world around me - regardless
