She does not look like I expect. Adorned in white. Her posture strong, her gaze confident. She looks sophisticated, elegant, beautiful. She carries a sense of importance. Hagar does not look like I envision. Owned by somebody else. Her body not freely given. Destitute and alone in the wilderness.
She is not what I envision. But perhaps she is closer to who God sees.
His posture surprises me. There is an ease to his presence. He is neither reserved nor reluctant. His smile is bright as he joins the celebration. The prodigal son’s posture at the table is not what I expect. There is no lingering shame, no shrinking back. His head does not hang low. His eyes do not avert the gaze of others.
His posture is not what I expect. But it is the posture of someone secure at God’s table.
How God sees and embraces us lies at the heart of Tarah Paul’s exhibit, I Will Never Leave You. Her photography is a “magnifying glass,” helping others uncover something of who God is and how He sees them.
But before her art could become an offering, Tarah had to relinquish what she believed it offered her.
As a child, Tarah began to associate her value with what she could offer. Her childhood was filled with faith, love, joy and togetherness: breakfast outside in their small driveway, her mother’s Sunday meals of Sòs Pwa and legumes followed by a movie, and rare visits to Olive Garden.
“Despite the craziness of how things were, I think it was just the being together part of it that made the meal so memorable. I love meals so much because they are a magnet for togetherness.”
But there were also burdens. The daughter of Haitian immigrants, Tarah watched her parents set aside their dreams and ambitions for the family. Mental illness and violence brought heavier strains. While still growing up herself, Tarah became a caretaker, looking after her youngest brother and trying to provide stability for her family.
“Someone needs to be strong. Someone needed to take care of everyone. I learned I could be of help and that made me valuable to others.”
Around the same time, Tarah picked up her sister’s Canon digital camera and began adding to what she calls her family’s “never-ending photo album.” By college, people were noticing her creativity and skill and seeking her out. Photography gave Tarah another way to be useful, valued, and needed.
A series of family traumas in her early 20s revealed the limits of Tarah’s ability to save the people she loved. She couldn’t hold everything and everyone together.
“The only thing that was an anchor during that time was going to church. I realized that I had been following the rhythms of my family and going through the motions, but there hadn’t been the personal commitment.”
Tarah committed her life to Christ at the end of college. Shortly afterward, she moved to New York City for work at a tech company. But her need to offer value and to matter did not disappear. Tarah poured herself into work and photography. Signs of success followed, such as shooting an event at New York Fashion Week.
“I wanted my name to be big, or to just become more visible with my photography and the work that I was doing.”
In June 2025, at 23, Tarah debuted her first exhibition, Still we Adorn, in Harlem, showing more than 30 pieces. It was an achievement, but looking back, Tarah sees something else beneath it:
“I wanted my photography to blow up because then people would see that I’m good enough. People would see that I offer value. That I am of value.”
Instead, the show left her burnt out. Years of caretaking had taken their toll. She carried grief for her family, disappointment in herself and a deep loneliness as relationships and social activities fell away.
“I didn’t touch my camera for a long time.”
In that pause, Tarah began to discover a different way of understanding her art.
“The creative director at my church introduced me to this idea that God is the ultimate creator. If He has so much intentionality and loves to create the trees and the lilies, then He also cares about what we create. He can be our creative director, and we can co-create with Him.”
Tarah joined Goldenwood, a Christian institute focused on spiritual attentiveness to God in work.
“At this point, I’m like, alright God, we’re in this together. I’m going to do this with you, but I don’t know what that looks like and I couldn’t hear His voice.”
At Goldenwood, listening began with slowing down. In imaginative prayer, she pictured herself on a park bench with Jesus beside her. Because friends talk on a bench. Then came stillness. Nowhere to go. Nothing to achieve. Just silence.
Tarah realized:
“My life has been full of peaks and valleys, but God was consistent. No matter what was happening, He never left me.”
She noticed what she calls “saving graces” woven through her story. The enduring love of her parents, a roommate who truly knew her, and Christian mentors who supported her. God had been with her, and not because of what she could offer her family or produce behind a camera.
The stories of Hagar and the Prodigal son took on new significance.
“Hagar runs away and her story could have ended at this point. But there in the wilderness, alone, God sees her pain, calls her by name and gives her a promise of her own.”
“From Saul to Paul, from Abram to Abraham, from Jacob’s walk to his limp, when we’ve encountered God, there’s evidence that we’ve spent time with him. I wanted to evoke something similar in this image, to tangibly show that Hagar is changed by her encounter with God. Her adornments, her white, her tall stance are evidence of God’s hand on her life and that she’s not the same anymore despite what she’s experienced.”
The prodigal son also returns with nothing after squandering his inheritance. His father celebrates him anyway, not because of what he brings home, but because he is his son.
“When you belong, you don’t have to show that you belong anymore. You blend into everything. That’s why I wanted the son to be almost lost in the background. His troubles are no longer the focal point, but his story is part of the larger celebration.”
For Tarah, these stories began to reorient something fundamental about her own identity.
“I realized if I don’t have anything, I still have everything. I am seen and I have value before I provide anything.”
“What has shifted in me is my relationship with the things that I thought made me valuable. Through this undoing, I’ve learned that even if my name goes nowhere, it’s okay.”
As photography was freed from having to prove Tarah’s worth, she began to see more clearly what it could be for.
“Through the exhibit I Will Never Leave You, I want to help open the eyes of my friends to see these invisible connections of similar experiences we’ve all dealt with, that these ancient stories hold present truths still.”
As Tarah prepares for the October exhibit at Neighbor Gallery in Chelsea, old fears remain. She does not have the funds to execute the exhibition as she imagined.
“What if God is not in the room? What if it doesn’t have an impact because it’s not at its best?”
“Faithfulness right now is trusting that even if the photos are in Target frames, God can use those Target frames. It doesn’t have to be perfect. He can make beauty even out of an imperfect exhibit.”
Tarah still hopes people come, that the work moves them and the exhibition opens doors. But she is learning not to make those outcomes the measure of whether her work was worth offering.
“I believe that my art isn’t just for now but for all eternity. It is my contribution to the wedding feast that is to come. It is adding to the three-string harmony of the angels as they sing, ‘Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!’”
Her art is a gift she can offer to the feast because she is secure in her seat at the table.
Tarah Paul’s exhibit, I will Never Leave You, opens at Neighbor Gallery in Chelsea, New York City, on October 2, 2026, and runs through November 13. Tarah is a 2025–26 Goldenwood alumna of the Nautilus program.
Kate Katch is a storyteller and researcher who helps people and organizations uncover and tell stories of purpose, impact and transformation. She loves exploring how remembering our stories in light of who God is and His larger story can shape how we understand ourselves and our work. Kate is a 2025–26 Goldenwood alumna of the Nautilus program.