Storyteller

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Location: Calle del Duque de Rivas – Madrid, Spain

I always wanted to be a writer. But in my earliest memories, the desire to write was as much about being able to make my own books as it was about the writing itself. I loved crafts and art projects; assembling the pages of a book, drawing my own cover art and illustrations, were all part of the fun.

I was thirteen when I realised that I really wanted to write. It wasn’t about the art or the binding; I wanted to tell stories. The realization came to me in an unexpected, and relatively inopportune, moment. I was standing in front of the class with my best friend, performing a skit from the book we’d just finished reading. Normally, I was nervous to get up and speak in front of a group, at least in the moments before doing it. But this felt good, comfortable, even easy. And the lines needed a little work. So I started to change them as I went, like any good storyteller, improving upon the material as I moved through it. My best friend, not surprisingly, was completely thrown and more than a little annoyed. But we pulled it off… well, actually, taking the whole room by surprise.

I was cast as the lead in the school play that year. And I stuck to the script, mostly, though the temptation to edit as I went was always present.

Almost everything I’ve done in my life since that day in eighth grade English class is just an extension of my desire to be a storyteller. The fact is, writing is a wonderful way to record moments and memories, but it isn’t the only way. Photography is way of telling stories, too.

When we take photos, there’s always a story them, even if it’s just a vignette. It will, I’m sure, surprise none of you to know that the story I imagined for these photos was quite different from the one we wound up capturing. All my visions of photos in Madrid involved sunrises and blue skies. My inner storyteller wanted to tell tales of summer mornings. But instead, we got clouds and sudden downpours. So I made edits. I pivoted. The wonderful thing about telling stories is that there are so many of them. The available material is almost endless.

And so, this is the story of a very grey morning in Madrid, spent lounging with a book and a cup of tea rather than wandering the city streets in the early morning. But it’s also the story of a woman who, like all women, was once a thirteen-year-old girl. A girl who’d grown up believing she was shy and unassuming, destined to spend life in the background of stories with main characters more glamorous and exciting than herself. Although she didn’t become an actress, it was through acting that she learned life had very different plans for her. Now, decades later, she is a storyteller, capturing moments in words and pictures.

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