About /
The obsession with analog photography has followed Bonnie from California to France, Washington, and now through the quiet landscapes of Idaho. It all started after Bonnie decided to try a photography class after she did not make her High School performance dance team. She spent the next three years in this darkroom and continued taking classes throughout college. She brought five rolls of original Polaroid film with her while teaching for a year abroad in France, where she learned to savor the film for intangible moments.
She holds a Master’s degree from the University of Washington in Sociology, where she focused on visual sociology, demography, and ethnographic methods. Along the way, she kept finding boxes of analog cameras on her walks to campus—collecting them even when she didn’t have time to use them. It wasn’t until she moved with her two young children to an off-grid cabin in Idaho to help her husband heal from an unexpected injury that life was whittled down to the necessities. Here, she rediscovered an old friend: one of her Polaroid cameras. Every capture took new meaning, helping her focus on the promise of beauty (Ps 27:4) etched into the sufferings that marked this chapter. She has continued to use Polaroid film, finding new challenges in shooting the stark winter landscapes she has come to call home in the Rocky Mountains. She has photographed weddings, album covers, maternity sessions, and newborns using hybrid methods. She recently inherited a Hasselblad and is working with 120 film.
She is always searching for selah: those sacred pauses where you find beauty, capture it and share it with others.
Beyond photography, she has co-founded an American manufacturing brand with her husband, worked as a behavior therapist, and also homeschooled her children. No matter where life takes her, she will always keep a camera and pen close at hand.
You can see more of her work @instantdreamlight
Exhibitions
2025 ImageNation Paris, One Art Space, New York
2024 Nostalgia 3rd Place, Azalea Arts, Online
2024 Chase the Light, PCNW, Seattle, Washington
2023 Polaroid Festival, Le Petit Oiseau Va Sortir, Paris, France
2009 Ladyfest, Bellingham, Washington