I’m a little overdue in posting these, so let me start with a bit of background info. Earlier this year, I was asked to work on a portrait project, documenting a renewed sense of self resulting from a first-ever tattoo. If you know of anyone with tattoos, there’s often a story that goes along with each. Taylor’s story involves numerous surgeries that left her scarred – emotionally – and very visibly across the lower back. She went from a self-confident and secure woman to someone with a sense of having lost all beauty. Fifteen years went by before she had the idea and gathered up the courage to get a tattoo, something that she says completely changed her life and has made her feel beautiful again.

Taylor approached me about photographing her in a way that would show the tattoo in a classic, sexy, tasteful way. The more I thought about it, the more I thought it would be neat to contrast the beauty that this experience has brought to her life with the rough, scarred backdrop of a worn-down interior space, which we found. Thank you, Taylor, for your amazing cooperation. I don’t think anyone would know that we spent two hours in an unheated building during the dead of winter in Central New York!