SONYA
When I left home after graduation, my first stop was Kentucky. I had loved horses as a child, and the song “My Old Kentucky Home” during the Derby always made me feel like crying. Maybe it was the huge hats, a welcome cover from the world, or the sight of the horses running as fast as they could only to end up right where they started, but it was my first choice for escape. I arrived in Lexington and was welcomed by endless miles of thoroughbred farms. White picket fences and grass so green it looked blue. Smiles graced everyone’s faces.
I rented a hotel room and car for a week. With no clear direction about what I was doing or planning, I assumed seven days was enough time to figure it out. After researching various options, I started my adventure. Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, I spent hours hanging off freshly painted fences photographing horses grazing on the grass. At the world famous Keeneland horse track, I snapped pictures of thoroughbreds in flight. Their powerful legs propelled them forward, while their chiseled bodies stayed in perfect alignment with the track. Stall cleaners started recognizing me. At first it was daily waves, but soon they offered me unrestricted entrance to the stalls. With their permission, I was able to capture the horses in peaceful repose, waiting until it was their moment to shine.
Seven days turned to fourteen. I had hundreds of photos, but I still took more. My camera offered a safety I hadn’t known before. For the first time in my life, I was in control. But my refuge proved temporary. A horse owner’s son noticed me. A few years older, he was handsome and kind. He offered to show me how to ride the ones I admired. English versus Western. We began to spend our days together. When he kissed me, I expected it. The first time we slept together, I told him I was quiet because it was so beautiful. When he told me he loved me, I was lost, falling off a cliff with no parachute. I struggled to say the words back to him, but images of my father strangled any hope. That night I left without saying good-bye. Drove until I found a motel off the highway, hundreds of miles from nowhere. Turning on my computer, I searched the Internet until I found what I was looking for. I read from sunset until sunrise, each account filling an unspoken need within me. Exhausted, I laid my head down on the cheap wood desk and cried.
After leaving Kentucky, I had no idea what to do with the hundreds of pictures I had taken. With no formal training in photography, I had no concept of how to create a career in the industry. Searching online, I found a website where amateurs uploaded their pictures for anyone’s viewing pleasure. I did so and thought nothing of them until I received a call from an agent a month later. Linda was with a large management company that represented some of the premier photographers in the country. She asked to see a portfolio. When I told her I didn’t have one but was currently in Turkey and could send her pictures I had recently taken, she laughed. “You do that,” she said. She signed me, and I’ve been with her ever since. Through her contacts, I’ve been hired to work all over the world.
I call Linda days after promising Trisha I won’t leave. When I reach her answering machine at the agency I call her cell phone.
“Sonya, sweetie, how are you?” My name has come up on her caller ID.