Beth Rose

My love for photography started over two decades ago in high school where I was the entire photography club. After high school I studied at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. While my skill was praised in my college years, my artistic eye was not. The criticism was that, while my composition and exposure were right on, the content lacked. It wasn’t “deep” enough, just because it wasn’t dark. But my world was so dark at that time. My spirit was dying- I was being crushed from the inside out. It wasn’t the first time. So many times, over and over, I had been more than misunderstood. I had been misused, mistreated and wasted. I wanted to be free. So I expressed it in my art. When my life was full of darkness and despair and the weight of someone else’s misery, I looked for a safe place. What I printed in the darkroom represented what was at the depth of my soul. Joy. Somewhere under there was a Joy that could never be stolen from me.

They were wrong, I did dig deep. So deep that even under the garbage I was living in, I found Freedom. My life is so overwhelmingly full now. I could never describe what I have in a way that could shine any kind of light on the true abundance of it. When I dig deep I still find Joy, and now it rises to the surface too. I have my dark days, and they are heavy, and in my opinion, unwarranted, but they come just the same. I wait, patiently, and they pass. And my Light shines again.