“I think people get the wrong idea,” she said when I complimented her colorful dress. “They think I am a lot fancier than I am. But I’m just me, nothing extra, no fillers.” She smiled, emitting a light effervescence, with just a bit of tang – as if her seemingly boundless optimism was weighted by a measure of hurt. People like her can be difficult to photograph. They attract light from every unexpected place and you can’t control it. But I tried anyway, shooting in near darkness. As the great Leonard Cohen sang, “there’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” But maybe he had something else in mind.