It's in my Blood

Chelsea Crawford
It’s in my Blood

Photography that is. It’s in my blood so far that I know it wasn’t by coincidence. The passion flows from both sides and it’s been running since the day I was created.

Every part of me just wants to capture an image and save it forever; it’s how I program my memories. I found my infatuation for photography in my freshman year of high school. It was there where I realized, this was the release I was looking for, and this is how I can express my creativity. From then on for all four years I took every type of photography class offered. By the end of high school the only AP test I passed was my AP Portfolio for Photography. I got the highest score possible.

Ecstatic as I was, I knew that couldn’t be a part of my future.

After growing up with a single mom for 3 years, who only had an Associates Arts degree in Photography, I saw how tough things were for her in the field. She was constantly working miserable retail hours in malls and being laid off more times than not from places being shut down. At that point her only choice was to make a business of her own.

From early on I can remember my grandparents talking about how my mother doesn’t have a proper income, a real career, or a substantial education. But to be fair the digital photography era pushed her out of a chance before she even blinked an eye.

Throughout the years it has been tough seeing my mom struggle to hold her own in the family budget, it might even be one of the causes for her control issues; but who knows? I just know photography cant be my trade.

Having to put your passion, and your release of enjoyment on the backburner because you have to face reality is one extremely hard thing to do. But that’s not the only way reality hits home for me.

I am a bastard child. My mom does not genealogically know who my real father is.

When I finally got up the guts to ask my mom whom my father was at about age 12 or 13 her response was “I don’t know.”

My mind was in shock. I thought “What do you mean YOU DON’T KNOW?!” She must be joking. Is this her bad sense of humor coming through again or what?

So I questioned her further of course and asked, “What do you mean you don’t know?” She then replied something like “it took me a while to realize I was pregnant and I had gotten pregnant around the time when I was sort of breaking up with one guy and seeing another and” bladdy blah blah …

Really? Well that’s just great Ma. But wait it gets even better. I then ask, “So what are their names?”

Her response, “I don’t know.”- Of course this is a lie to end the conversation immediately as to avoid the humility in front of her eager to learn pre-teen while sitting in the church parking lot. But I, being curious and in disbelief, wasn’t going to let her slide away that easy.

Eventually, I ended up with one name out of three options. Not the way I imagined that conversation going, to say the least.

I still have a hard time remembering his name. (I have it stored in my phone in case I forget. Which I just did.) Over the years since that disturbing conversation I have asked my mom more information about this guy and she says she is pretty sure that’s the one because he now has a daughter with blonde hair and blue eyes, which my mother does not and I do.

She knows this because they are both photographers. They studied photography together somewhere along the line; connected, made me, and broke up. Just to keep things simple.

Every now and then my mom will attend a local Photoshop meeting or something photography related and will happen to see him, she says.

Not so long ago I asked if I could meet him. I was inquisitive about my nationality and background, and some medical reasons. That’s when she explained how they don’t really speak to one another. She then told me that he knows I exist and I could indefinitely be his, but no test has ever been done, upon my mother’s request.

So kind of knowing that I once came from two creative photographers that collaborated together and happened to make me in the process is what reassures me that photography is in my blood.