To the people who made this life possible—

I was 15 years old when I decided I wanted to be a photographer.

I was a kid wandering the streets of Los Angeles with a camera and a very big dream. I wanted to make photographs. I wanted to make art. I wanted to build a life where creating things mattered.

I had no idea what that life would look like.

I certainly couldn’t have imagined this one.

For more than 30 years, you have invited me into your lives. You trusted me with your weddings and your babies, your families and your businesses, your bodies and your stories. You hung my art on your walls. You came to my shows. You bought strange things I made because something in them spoke to you. You recommended me to your friends. You showed up, year after year, project after project, reinvention after reinvention.

You let me be an artist.

And I don't know if I will ever be able to adequately explain what that has meant to me.

Because every person who booked a session, bought a piece of art, shared my work, came to an opening, hired me again, told a friend about me, or simply kept paying attention helped that 15-year-old kid's dream come true.

You gave me a life I once only knew how to imagine.

In November 2026, I will hang up my cameras and my brushes professionally.

Even writing that feels enormous.

I know better than to say I will never pick up a camera or paintbrush again. Making things is too woven into who I am. But I am ready to stop asking my creativity to earn its keep. I am ready to let art belong to me again—to make something because I want to, or make nothing at all.

I will still be writing for City Weekly. I will still be making The Cat's Meow. I am still curious about what might find me next.

But for a little while, I want to be a trad dyke.

I want to focus on my family. I want to make dinner. Tend the garden. Watch the birds. Be home when the people I love walk through the door. Take trips without wondering what work I should be doing. Read more books. Make things badly and never sell them. Sit still long enough to notice my own life.

My youngest is almost 17. My 18-year-old has already moved out. The strange thing about this chapter is realizing that life isn't slowing down just because I finally am.

For so much of my life, I have been documenting moments before they disappeared. Maybe this next chapter is about putting the camera down and letting myself be inside them.

There is grief in closing something I have loved for this long. But there is also an incredible amount of gratitude.

I got to do it.

That 15-year-old kid got to grow up and become a photographer. An artist. A working artist, no less. I got to spend more than three decades making things and connecting with people because of them.

And I got to do it because you were there.

Thank you for trusting me.

Thank you for seeing me.

Thank you for letting me see you.

Thank you for buying the weird art, standing in front of my camera, showing up to the shows, reading the words, cheering on the next strange idea, and allowing me to keep becoming whoever I was becoming.

You helped me build a life beyond anything that kid wandering Los Angeles could have imagined.

What a gift.

What a life.

Thank you for helping me live it.

With all my love and gratitude,
Cat Palmer