“I’m a documentary photographer who was raised in California and now lives in New York, and I sometimes feel I’ve already lived two lives — but not because of the changes in geography I’ve experienced. A little more than two years ago, when I was 23, I suffered a spinal cord injury while cliff diving on the Yuba River in Northern California. In a matter of seconds, I became disabled.
I was mostly paralyzed from the waist down, and began using a wheelchair. The doctors could not guarantee that I would walk again, but I persevered. A year later, I had regained some ability to move. I did not regain feeling in the lower half of my body, but I could walk again.
That was when I moved to New York to attend school. The layout of the city pushed me to walk even more. I walked so much that the skin on one of my heels wore completely away (I still lacked the feeling to realize I had injured myself), and the doctor ordered me back to the wheelchair until my foot healed…”