Sophie Lasher shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.
Good morning Sophie, we’re so happy to have you here with us and we’d love to explore your story and how you think about life and legacy and so much more. So let’s start with a question we often ask: Are you walking a path—or wandering?
I’m going to break the rules here and say both and neither. I’m definitely not walking an existing path, but I also feel a directional pull that keeps me from saying I’m wandering. I would say I’m forging my own path and I always have been.
As a queer and neurodivergent person, I think walking a path has never really been an option for me. I live outside of boxes, I don’t fit into labels that society has created. I think I wandered for a bit, but wandering helped me discover the direction I want to go. Even in college, I tried a couple different majors until I realized the only option that was going to work was to create my own program, which, thankfully, my university offered as a path forward. Once I realized my passion for queer stories, I was able to pull that in several different directions, some of which have been sustainable career paths, and others less so. I’m still figuring that part out. I’m so passionate about representation and visibility of intersectional LGBTQIA+ stories that sometimes I can’t stop working because it’s so important to me. This is one way in which I’m still wandering– figuring out which career paths are sustainable, which will stick around, and which are maybe not quite right for me. We’re on a journey! A very gay, very creative journey.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
Hi! I’m Sophie (she/her). I have two main business ventures at the moment, one of which is my photography, and the other is a nonprofit I recently co founded, the Queer Arts Collective.
My photography business (Sophie Lasher Photography) is Maryland-based and dedicated to a “come as you are” philosophy. I want to capture my clients’ stories as authentically as possible. I use both digital and film methods to photograph signature sessions (engagement, couples, families, etc), as well as weddings and elopements, The main thing that makes my business different and special is that I am endlessly committed to being a safe space for anyone and everyone. Your love and your story are important, valuable, and have as much inherent worth as anyone else’s, and I will do everything I can to create photographs that prove that to be true. This message really hits home with the queer community, which I’m lucky to call myself a part of. I love queer joy! I love queer love! It’s magical and I want to keep it safe forever through my photographs.
This love for queer storytelling led me to my newest adventure: the Queer Arts Collective. My friend Ari (they/them) and I founded this nonprofit to support and drive intersectional queer representation and visibility in the arts. Right now, as we get started, our focus is on building our community of LGBTQIA+ artists and patrons in central Maryland. We’re hosting events to bring people together in a creative and accessible environment while at the same time, expanding a network of queer creatives in our area whose careers and passions we can champion as an organization. Our big goal is to open a space of our own where queer artists can rent studio space and work collaboratively, patrons can gather for events, and we can showcase work by artists we represent. Eventually, we’re hoping to expand out of central Maryland and open up physical spaces anywhere we can, focusing on less metropolitan areas in order to make queer spaces more accessible to the community at large.
Okay, so here’s a deep one: Who were you before the world told you who you had to be?
It’s been a recurring theme in my life lately that I don’t know the answer to this question. As an autistic kid, especially a young autistic girl, the whole “world telling me who I have to be” situation has always been deafeningly loud. As soon as I was aware of other people, as soon as the world around me became a part of my little life, I lost the person I was becoming. As long as I can remember, I’ve been very attuned to who the world wants me to be, to trying to fit into a box that someone else built. I’m just learning now that I don’t have to fit into that box, just starting to let go of that expectation for myself. School was all about trying as hard as I could to fit in in an environment that wasn’t built for me as a neurodivergent person. All those formative years were full of masking, pretending to be something I’m not. I did so much pretending that I don’t know who I am underneath it all. I was so young when it started that I can’t remember my life without it. So, to answer the question, I don’t know, but I’m trying as hard as I can to find her and bring her back.
Do you remember a time someone truly listened to you?
This is what initially drew me to my wife. I always had friends, but I never had a friend like her. We met when we were 14, and she was the first friend I had that really listened, was really interested in what I was saying, who really wanted to know me. She made me feel interesting and captivating, the way she interacted with me was magnetic. No matter what was going on, she always listened to every word I had to get out, especially when no one else would. She stuck around through the hardest parts of my life back then, and I’m so lucky she’ll be there for anything headed our way in the future. Thank goodness I get to keep her forever.
Alright, so if you are open to it, let’s explore some philosophical questions that touch on your values and worldview. What’s a belief you used to hold tightly but now think was naive or wrong?
Along with the last question, I would say I used to believe that fitting in would make everything okay. As long as no one could see how different I really was, maybe I’d survive. I think part of this was a product of my environment– I was not built for a traditional school setting and a traditional school setting was not built for me. I was using all my energy to try and be like everyone else– what a waste that was. All the best parts of my life have come from being my real self. My business started thriving when I started speaking directly to the LGBTQIA+ community and being vocal about my beliefs. If I were still trying to be like everyone else, I probably wouldn’t be married to a woman, which is undeniably the best thing in my life. Being different really is my superpower, not something that holds me back. Everything I do as my authentic self is wildly more fulfilling than anything I’ve ever done while pretending to fit in. Standing out is scary almost all the time, but I’m learning that standing out and being real is so much more powerful than playing it safe and pretending.
Thank you so much for all of your openness so far. Maybe we can close with a future oriented question. What pain do you resist facing directly?
I’ve been on this inner child healing journey lately. I’m rewriting narratives I’ve held onto for a longggg time. One exercise I’ve been doing (shout out to my therapist, we love you) is finding the key moments from when I was younger that formed these beliefs I hold about myself, then visualizing telling that younger version of myself the truth I know now in order to replace that false narrative. It sounds cheesy, but talking to my 15 year old self has really been changing my brain in some super beneficial ways. However, to bring it back to pain that I’m resisting facing directly, I can’t dive back into my past too far while doing this exercise. The aforementioned therapist actually won’t let me go back into my early childhood because it’s just too hard right now–being a tiny autistic girly is not for the faint of heart. I’m very hopeful that I’ll get there soon, but it’s a healing moment for another time. We gotta work backwards and get through the teen years first. One other bonus inner-teen-healing activity I’ve been up to is playing the french horn in a community band. I played all throughout middle and high school and it was all full of pressure to be perfect, but now I just get to enjoy it and it’s been magical. Band geeks 4ever <3
Contact Info:
- Website: sophielasherphotography.com, queerartscollective.org
- Instagram: @sophielasherphotography, @queerarts.collective
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