"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free"

• Emma Lazarus

In 2017, when this was taken, liberty felt much more uncertain than it had ever felt before and the weight of this feeling traveled with me on my very first trip to Liberty Island. Despite having an apartment in Brooklyn that viewed the statue, I had never made the trip to where my ancestors first started their journey to citizenship.

As one of the worlds most recognizable icons, I knew finding a new angle on this classic would be a challenge. After several hours, I noticed the late afternoon sun, low in the sky, peeking out from behind the statue, temporarily blinding me as I stared directly into the sun for a moment. Looking up and seeing the looming enormity of Lady Liberty combined with the unusual angle and the way the compression of the 100mm focal length twisted and distorted the image, I knew that I had captured exactly the image and feeling that was inside me.