Portraits By Katie Jo

One of the lessons I have learned in my life – and seem to continually reinforce is that: A person can only receive a message from where they are standing, not from the place it was given.

What this means to me, is that we all see life in our very own way. Through the lens of our personal history and experiences, judgments and beliefs.

Many times I have been trying to convey a point of view… only to have my words taken out of context… or vice versa.

This has led me to realize that TRUTH can be relative. Truth to one person can differ than truth to another. We create our lives, shaped by our perceptions.

In these photographs, I used 3 different lenses to capture the same image. They are all subtly different from each other. Just like as we humans view the world in different ways.

Have you ever been in a crowd of people and at any given time a thousand things are happening? A million thoughts are ricocheting around the room… one person will notice a small girl drop her doll and a gentleman pick up the doll, dust it off and with a kind smile return it to the darling child; while at the same time a woman and her boyfriend begin an argument full of tension and spittle from spat spoken words.

Two observers at the same event saw two different exchanges between people and immediately-subconsciously decided that the experience of the gathering was friendly-or unfriendly and BOTH were absolutely true.

There are countless stories playing out in each one of our lives at every moment. Each experience we enter into has a myriad of possibilities all dependent upon our decision to classify what we are learning.

“The sky is BLUE.” Is a seemingly harmless and inconsequential statement to be made, but to a color blind person even a simple sentence like that can have a different meaning.

The beauty of seeing the world through lenses is that we have the choice and the power- even the obligation to decide for ourselves the way we see the world.

I can choose to see the world as a friendly place full of love and possibilities. Others may choose to see the world as a hostile place. Both of us will be right. Both of us will reinforce our decisions about the world through the filter and lens we view.

Katie Welch