There was a whole philosophy in the contrast, the difference between a life spent hiding what is real and a life spent honoring it.

Gwen had filtered everything, and had nothing.

My daughter had let herself be seen exactly as she was, and had, at seventeen, more genuine peace than her aunt had managed in four decades of careful concealment.

The title was not just a description of a photography style.

It was, I understood, the entire lesson of everything that had happened to us, the difference between the two women at the center of this story: the one who filtered her whole life and lost it, and the one who refused to filter herself and found it.

Chapter 20 — Where to Point the Lens