I recently met Nicole Perez, Clinical Psychologist, downtown resident, and wildlife photographer extraordinaire. She’s originally from Puerto Rico, and her journey between the two is about as interesting as what she’s currently up to. She moved downtown as a “temporary” place during the pandemic, and it’s become “less than temporary.”
Nicole’s family includes several attorneys. “I come from a long line of lawyers. My uncle, my brother, everyone’s a lawyer.” She first thought she might become a criminal defense attorney. For women, she said, there were fewer options in the profession. She would likely have settled into a private practice focused on family law, “which would have killed my soul.”
While helping in her father’s office as a teenager, she noticed a female psychologist who had the office next door. “One day I walked in and said, ‘I need therapy, but I got no money.” Asked why she needed therapy, she said, “I have some childhood issues I need to work through.” She charged her a dollar a session and that was her introduction to the occupation she would ultimately gravitate towards.
Wanting out of Puerto Rico, “It’s a hundred miles by thirty-five, and . . . in the middle of the ocean there is only so much you can do,” she lingered for a few years. After high school she got a job at a plastics company. On her resume applying for the job, she called herself a “comptroller, and I read ‘Accounting for Dummies’.” She was “in and out of college” there for about three years but didn’t take it seriously.
Knowing she had to make a change, she packed “three boxes and flew to Miami, where all Puerto Ricans go” in 2000. She married briefly in south Florida and her then husband was transferred to Gatlinburg with his time-share company. Determined to do something productive with her time in east Tennessee, she enrolled at the University of Tennessee, now a more serious student.
Instead of becoming a lawyer, like the rest of her family, she graduated with a degree in sociology and psychology. She had to struggle to learn Appalachian English, though she grew up speaking English as a second language. While assuming the stopover in the area would be brief, she continued living in Knoxville and attending UT through a master’s degree and a PhD. After completing her degrees, she moved to South Carolina for her internship and residency. She completed post-doctoral work in New York City. She opened her private practice in 2010 on Sutherland Avenue, where it remains, though not in the original building.
Always a traveler, in her first year of grad school she applied to represent UT in China, teaching “American Culture.” Certain she’d be rejected, she forgot about the application until four months ago she got a call to pack her bags. She’d traveled internationally growing up, “but this was my first taste of going to a place that was uncomfortable, that wasn’t ‘vacation.'” She lived there for a summer, teaching at Tsinghua University in Northwest Beijing. “After that I couldn’t travel the same way.”
She picked up a camera and started shooting, finding she loved it. She photographed in China. “I spent a month in Mexico, living at the edge of Belize.” Every summer and winter she used home swapping to be able to travel to countries around the world. “I photographed scenery and people. I started doing closeups.” She ultimately traveled to Africa, first to Kenya and Tanzania, photographing cats. She found she “had a knack for it.” That was it for her and she has continued to photograph animals, particularly large cats. “I built a house in Costa Rica to be around animals, right under the volcano.”
Having found her passion, she’s returned many times to Kenya, which she calls her “happy place,” staying in the bush and developing a network there. With her guide, Steven Weru, she operated a foundation, the Stephen Weru Education Fund, to discourage poaching in the preserves. The idea was to educate local children about the damage of poaching in hopes that they will refuse to be hired to help poachers as they get older. An exchange was needed in return for access to the classrooms, so she sold her photographs, funneling the money through the foundation to use the proceeds to build a bathroom at the school, build a water tank, or meet other needs.
She’s now been all over Africa but says “Kenya is home. It smells like earth.” She said it’s hard to articulate, but “there’s this ridge and when you look down, there are giraffes, there’s a fire over there. You can see the river in the distance that divides Kenya and Tanzania. There’s a pride of Lions and the animals are coming this direction to get high ground. Hyenas are scurrying to see that they can scavenge and then there are the elephants — and life makes sense.” Life, death, water, drought all come together. She’s able to watch life happening at the same time to everything, analogous to the human situation.
Then came the opportunity to travel to India to photograph Bengal Tigers in the wild, just a couple of months ago. She traveled to northing India, near Nepal. “That little sucker gave me a run for my money. It’s completely different. When you are photographing lions or other cats, they are waiting to hunt . . . During the day you can photograph them for hours. They are sleepy and they are curious about you. You can get eye contact.”
She likens tigers to house cats. “Try chasing your cat and get it to look at you.” Tigers, she said, don’t care about you and are not interested. They ignore humans and go about their business. Getting a shot where they are looking at the camera is nearly impossible. “To photograph that animal, you have to hang upside down from the truck . . . if it looks like it’s looking at you” it’s because you’ve contorted yourself to get in front of their gaze. “I’ve never wanted to throw my camera before.”
It took her fifteen days to get the photographs, getting a glimpse only twice. “Photographing a tiger is too much like life. It’s either opportunistic, or you have to sit and wait and wait, or you chase, or you gamble. That is tough.”
You may get an opportunity to see her work. Conversations are underway regarding an exhibition of the tigers at a local gallery. In the meantime, you might run into her around downtown — in between trips to photograph exotic animals.