Houston Photographer
Amalya Shandelman | Houston photographer

EMERGE

An "e" prefix is most often short for Latin "ex": "out of, from."

So "emerge" can be understood as "e-merge" - merging with something by leaving it.

Which is obviously a paradox on the face of it! Can we make some sense of this?

But look at it this way. By becoming each day a new and better version of ourselves, we also become newer, truer versions of everything we always were. Think of it as an e-merge: Leaving our old selves to merge back into ourselves, bigger and better.

Life is not static. It is about dynamics. Life is about change.

As a portrait photographer, those are the dynamics I endeavor always to capture in my subjects. To help them see themselves as I see them: Constantly emerging and stepping out of themselves, but then to come back in - truer and better.

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