It started in 2009. Inside the yoga studio I owned, I set the timer and stepped in front of my camera for the first time. In the LCD panel, I saw not an insecure girl, but a stranger. Maybe, it suddenly occurred to me, I had been wrong. Maybe I was not unattractive, uncreative and not good enough. I permitted myself the idea that perhaps there was another perspective, and just like that the course of my creative life shifted. In the four years that followed, I made five bodies of work, chronicling personal struggles and investigations. All the images featured me; none showed my face.

Fast forward seven years: I’m a 50-something American photographer, living in Uruguay. This ongoing project is a visual chapter in which I discovered – and accepted – me. It’s not a new story – city-girl living searching for herself on a farm in a foreign land — but it’s mine; a self-discovery tale in which I crashed and reconstructed. In the immense space of Uruguay, I delved into my dark, mended and rebuilt, using my camera as a healing tool and witness.

From thousands of images, I weave medium format files into panoramic panels. It is not lost on me the fact that the complicated editing process of piecing images together echoes the notion of putting myself back together. I can see in some of the works the reflection of my face for the first time and in it a strengthened woman, who, despite life’s obstacles, is living life more powerfully, under a great big sky.