Rite of Passage

They say, “Don’t meet your heroes.” And I suppose, for the most part, I believe in that.

When I first began my journey in photojournalism, I carried with me a constellation of idol. Photographers whose work I revered, whose voices and visions shaped my own. I bought their books, studied their projects until I could recite them by heart, clipped excerpts of their interviews and pinned them to my wall. Each fragment was a compass, reminding me why I chose this path and pointing me toward where I longed to go. Among those fragments were words and images from Maggie Steber, Mary Ellen Mark, Eugene Richards, and others.

So when I was chosen for the Missouri Photo Workshop, and Maggie herself stood among the tutors, it felt as if the world had folded in on itself, collapsing the impossible into the real. By chance (or fate) I was not in her group. And I was almost relieved. It was enough simply to share the air, to watch her from across the room (not creepily, I promise), to be reminded that sometimes proximity itself is a gift.

Months later, as if the universe conspired in my favour, Maggie went to Penang for the Obscura Festival. Through a curator, she reached out to me (!!!) to feature my work in one of the projections. It was unreal, the kind of gesture you never believe could be written into your own story :’)

A decade has passed, yet Maggie’s work still echoes inside me. None more so than her tender, devastating chronicle of her mother’s descent into dementia, and the long goodbye that followed. I have always been drawn to the gravity of family stories, which is why I ask my students to wrestle with them too. Each year, I show them Maggie’s Rite of Passage. Each year, the room fills with tears. I myself have watched it fifteen times or more, and still it breaks me open. At the end, I ask my students to write. And today, one wrote something so beautiful I cannot keep it only for myself.

And you know, sometimes I’m quietly grateful I wasn’t under Maggie’s tutelage in Missouri. That she remained a figure at a distance, untouched by the small disillusions that come with closeness. I keep her as I first held her: luminous, untarnished. A pristine image preserved. And I think I prefer it that way.