about

Desiree Steele has always been curious about people, places, and the stories hiding in plain sight.

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As a kid, she could sit on the floor for hours flipping through National Geographic, fascinated not only by the photographs, but by the lives and places inside them. She didn’t know it then, but she was already learning something that would become central to the way she lives and creates: pay attention. There is always a story.

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Today, Desiree is a photographer, writer, author, food columnist, and lifelong storyteller. For more than two decades, she has carried a camera, drawn to the things many of us walk right past—an empty road, an old building, a stranger in the distance, the way the light hits something ordinary and suddenly makes it extraordinary. She photographs what makes her stop.

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That same curiosity eventually carried her beyond the camera. She is the author of Backroads & Backporches: The Road Back to Me, a memoir about losing herself, finding her way back, and discovering that life doesn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful.

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And lately, some of her favorite stories are being told around a table. Through Momma Steele’s Elevated Kitchen, Desiree cooks the way she creates everything else—with curiosity, instinct, and a desire to bring people together. Her recipes and stories can also be found in her column in The Newsboy Local.

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For Desiree, photography, writing, food, travel, and gathering people together have never really been separate things. They are all ways of connecting. Of remembering. Of saying, “Look at this. This mattered.”

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That is The Habit of Noticing.

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It is the thread running through Desiree’s work and, increasingly, through her life—a reminder to slow down, look closer, stay curious, and notice the beautiful, complicated, ordinary stories happening right in front of us.

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www.desireesteele.com  |  www.desireesteele.photography