SCAD essay

In the midst of a chaotic life, an interesting young girl, passionate and creative, found peace when she picked me up and looked through my lens. Something just clicked, resting there in her hands, eyes squinted and pressed up to the viewfinder. In that moment, she and I both found something we had been searching for: solace. From that point on everything was history. I evolved with technology, and she grew up along side of me. I witnessed her past and will accompany her into the future. I am  Hillary Gunder’s camera, her third eye.

I was there from day one, making memories, recording events of her life.  The viewfinder allowed her to see things first in vivacious color, then in black and white. I watched as she began taking events from her life, faith, and family, attempting to divide them along two distinct lines, stumbling through the cloudy gray areas before realizing that life isn’t so easily categorized by right and wrong. She searched for stability whenever she looked through that viewfinder, working in the darkroom during whatever free time she could gather, the only place she was ever free to figure things out. This girl found a shred of individuality amidst the conformity of a homogeneous private school population. She began developing a unique vision of her own. 

Dedicated, hardworking, and involved, this aspiring artist often unwillingly sets me aside to devote attention to other commitments. But she always comes back to me, my strap around her neck, lens cap in her back pocket, toting me along wherever she goes. She sees the world through one giant viewfinder, the shutter opening and closing as she blinks to take it all in. She finds herself analyzing angles, light, focal points and depth of field. Her eye is drawn toward intricate details, specific parts rather than the whole. Quirky little things- a clothesline, a doorknob- stop her in her path as the rest of the world carries on, unaware of this magical find. Her stacks of photographs might appear a conglomeration of random objects, yet in every one she can pinpoint something that caused her to pull me to her face and shoot the photo. Her vision, this need to highlight things that often go overlooked, will carry this girl far into her future. She dreams of becoming a photojournalist, a freelance photographer, anything that will allow her to see and change the world. She wants to record for eternity the people, places, events that go unnoticed. Maybe one day her work will cause people to see things as she sees them, for how they really are. 

For now, I’ll be content accompanying her through the remainder of high school, to Savannah College of Art and Design, into the professional world. She’ll flutter from place to place with freedom and artistic license. She’ll enjoy herself, loving every minute of every day. We’re quite an unassuming duo, a young, energetic artist and her beloved camera. But together we’ll change the world.