Posted on by Melissa

2020 Year in Review

Eleven years ago today, I signed the lease for my first boudoir studio. It was a tiny little 500 square foot studio in the marketplace in Oak Creek, and it was gloriously ALL MINE. Wood floors, double french doors, natural light, and it’s own little office and bathroom. Looking at those keys in my hand is among the happiest moments in my life. Who knew eleven years later, I’d have photographed thousands of women and still be madly in love with this work?

Since looking at those keys in awe, I have grown so much as a person and an artist. I used to think boudoir was for brides, for anniversaries, for valentine’s day-for your partner. While it can definitely be fun for those things, now I understand it is so much more. It’s for breakups and divorces, for birthdays and for defining moments in our lives that call upon us to reinvent ourselves and reignite that fire that we somehow lost. It’s for documenting our bodies before we have major surgery, after we survive cancer, after we survive abuse. It’s about breaking out of molds we were told we need to fit in. It’s about finding our sexuality and proudly celebrating it – not depending on someone else to permissively validate it. To unapologetically OWN our bodies, our desires, our kinks and our magic. Boudoir is about being in touch with that fire.

I am so grateful to have seen it in all these amazing women that I photographed during the most tumultuous year of my career. I am so humbled and amazingly grateful for their trust and vulnerability in letting me capture their fire.

Here’s to a crazy 2020. Bring on eleven more years of empowering women. I’m here for it.

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