Natalie Cunningham, The Cost of Aspiring to Normal (SINGLE SHOT 2021)

Malia, aged 9 years old conveying the process and catastrophic repercussions of conceding to social norms as an Autistic girl. The sophisticated art of camouflaging involves persistent stifling of personal and creative potential by learning to desaturate your abilities, and the authentic way you perceive and experience the world. The tragic outcome of the elaborate effort to live in the shadows is in not only false self perceptions but exhaustion, burn out and crippling anxiety along with an often irretrievable loss of sense of self and inaccurate perception of capabilities and self worth.

Images have been resized for web display, which may cause some loss of image quality. Note: Original high-resolution images are used for judging.