Photographer: you okay?
Muse: I don’t know. but this helps

Photographer: what does?
Muse: the silence. your gaze. the way I disappear into the sheets

Photographer: you don’t disappear. you take over the whole room
Muse: then shoot me like that. not as a girl. as a storm


Photographer: why did you say yes?
Muse: I din’t think. i just knew. you said “road trip” and something opened

Photographer: we barely knew each other. you trusted me?
Muse: not you. the feeling. I trusted that

Photographer: and now?
Muse ( smiling) : now I’m in your hotel room on all fours ... not regretting a thing

Photographer: I thought I was the one watching
Muse: you are. but I’m the one unraveling

Photographer: then why the sign?
Muse: because this isn’t yours. this moment. this body. this undoing

Photographer: But you let me see fit
Muse: Seeing isn’t owning. You can capture the fall. But you don’t get to call it surrender


Photographer: you didn’t say a word. you just dropped that coat.
Muse: what would’ve been more polite? asking for permission?

Photographer: I … didn’t expect that. I thought we’d start with lingerie. or…
Muse: you thought I’d be shy? but I am not

Photographer: did you know I’d freeze like that?
Muse: no I hoped

Muse: I am going back to him. But I am not the same. I’ve touched a part of me that doesn’t shrink. It won’t be loud but it won’t go quite again.


Photographer: you always like windows?
Muse: I like in-between
inside / outside. seen / not seen
touching the work without letting it hold me

Photographer: and London?
Muse: she’s like me. wet hair. Late trains. velvet shadows. always almost naked. always pretending she’s not

Photographer: you always pose like that when the camera is on?
Muse: it’s how I know I am wanted

Photographer: but what about when it’s just me?
Muse: I don’t know yet. maybe I still need the performance to feel safe



this one is surreal - almost sculptural. her body a question mark, her pose defying gravity. it’s not longer just performance it’s transformation

Photographer: it’s like watching someone levitate
Muse: no. it’s like watching someone finally stop apologising for taking up space

Setting: A private atelier. Late night. The floor is scattered with fragments — paper scraps, prints, torn envelopes. The latest book lies unfinished on a table. Rain flickers faintly against the window. A lamp hums. The Muse is already seated. The Photographer stands. The Curator arrives late.

⸻

Muse:
Do you still need me?

Photographer:(surprised)
You’re the spark. The flicker before the fire. Of course I—

Muse:
No. I don’t mean as metaphor.
I mean me. This voice. This presence.
Lately, you move ahead without me.
I feel… ornamental.

Photographer:
You were never decoration.

Curator: (entering, setting down a notebook)
But she was framing.
You dressed her in distance. Gave her poetry, but not power.

Muse:
Exactly.
For years I whispered inspiration, stayed shapeless so you could project onto me.
But now, I want form. I want authorship.
Not to seduce the work, but to shape it.

Photographer:
And you think I’ve denied you that?

Muse:
No. You never even imagined it possible.
You needed me silent so your voice could echo louder.
But I’ve been watching. Listening.
And now I want my own tools. My own edits.

Curator: (coldly)
Every Muse becomes dangerous once she realizes she’s also an Artist.

Photographer: (turns to Curator)
You sound threatened.

Curator:
No. I’m intrigued.
She wants to dismantle your myth. That makes her the most honest element in the room.

Muse:
You’ve always called me chaos.
But maybe I was clarity all along.
You just weren’t ready to hear me say “no.”

Photographer: (quietly)
Then say it.

Muse:
No.
To invisibility.
To being the excuse for your risks, but never the hand that shapes them.
From now on, I don’t want to haunt the work.
I want to sign it.

Curator: (stepping closer)
You both resist the same thing: structure.
But for opposite reasons.
She wants to rewrite it.
You want to dissolve it.

Photographer:
And you?

Curator:
I want to expose it.
I’ve traced the gestures in every version. You loop back more than you think.
You call it improvisation. I call it recursion.

Muse:
But recursion is just longing, disguised as method.

Curator: (pauses)
Maybe.
But the longing itself is a map. And you both pretend not to follow it.

Photographer:
Then what now?

Muse:
Let me in. Not as voice. As co-creator.

Curator:
And when she disrupts your flow?
When the versions no longer orbit you, but something between you?

Photographer: (with a half-smile)
Then maybe the work will finally be honest.

(Silence. The lamp hums. Rain thickens slightly. The Muse opens the unfinished book and pulls a blank page forward.)

MUSE:
You've spent so much time framing others. Be honest - what are you afraid of showing about yourself when you press the shutter?

PHOTOGRAPHER:
That I’m just as fragile as the ones I photograph.
That behind the direction, the precision, the “vision”… there’s a boy still trying to understand women he couldn’t save.
A boy who looked for meaning in the silence of others, and tried to turn that silence into beauty.

Photography gave me a language when words collapsed.
It let me hold space without touching, connect without demanding.
But if I’m honest… every frame also hides me.
Behind the camera, I get to disappear — and still be intimate.
It’s safer that way.

There’s something seductive in guiding someone else into vulnerability while keeping your own intact.
But lately, I’ve started to feel that mirror cracking.
The more I photograph, the more I realize I’ve been documenting parts of myself all along. My longing. My control. My grief.

So maybe I’m not afraid of revealing too much.
Maybe I’m afraid that one day, someone — like you — will see right through the frame and know exactly who I am.




MUSE:
Have you ever fallen in love mid-shoot?
Not with the model, but with the moment — that fragile tension between seeing and being seen?

PHOTOGRAPHER:
Yes.
Too many times, in too many ways.
But it’s not the kind of love that asks for possession — it’s the kind that humbles you.

There’s a moment, always fleeting, when someone stops performing and simply is.
It’s like watching a veil drop — not just from them, but from the space between us.
Time slows.
Breath deepens.
The camera disappears, and we’re both naked in a way no body can replicate.

It’s addictive, that kind of presence.
Not because I want to keep it — but because it reminds me that truth is possible.
Even just for a second.

I don’t fall in love with people during shoots.
I fall in love with the possibility that something real can surface between two people who don’t owe each other anything.
It’s the most honest kind of intimacy I’ve known — unspoken, ephemeral, and imprinted in light.

And sometimes… I wonder if that’s what I’ve been chasing all along.
Not the photo. Not the muse.
But that moment when masks fall — including mine.



MUSE:
Which image in your archive do you think your inner child took?
And which one did your shadow self take?

PHOTOGRAPHER:
My inner child took that photo of her curled up on the hotel bed — not posing, not watching me, just breathing.
There was softness in the way the sheet fell around her hips, how the morning light wrapped her like she belonged to the world, not to me.
He — that younger version of me — just wanted closeness without fear.
To witness beauty without needing to control it.
To feel safe in the presence of someone who didn’t need saving.

My shadow took the image of her standing against the wall, wet hair, black heels, staring right into me.
There was a flicker of power-play in that moment — the seduction of control.
Of shaping her, directing her, molding her into a version that fit the myth I wanted to tell.
I see it now — the tension between admiration and possession.
Between the artist… and the puppeteer.

Both images live in me.
Sometimes they fight.
Sometimes they dance.

And photography — maybe it’s been my way of trying to reconcile the two.
To let the boy hold the camera…
…but make sure the man chooses what to do with it.

Photographer: you look like a princess
Muse: wrong era

Photographer: then what are you?
Muse: a process who burned the castle. kept the crown. and made her own rules

Photographer: and the prince?
Muse: if he is lucky - he gets to watch



Photographer: you like messing with me?
Muse: I like seeing how close I can get before you break

Photographer: and if I don’t?
Muse: then I will push harder flirting is just foreplay for power

Photographer: and the fear?
Muse: it used to whisper every time I moved. now it watches me and stays quiet

Photographer: you silenced it?
Woman: no. I Just stopped mistaking it for truth


Photographer: what changed?
Muse: I stopped waiting to be chosen. started choosing myself. my skin. my hunger. my power even when it scared me

Photographer: and now?
Woman: now I enter rooms like this - now asking. just being

(scribbled quickly, not meant to impress — meant to be true)

Photographer,

I’ve been thinking about what it means to be a Muse.
For a long time, I thought it meant disappearing into the work — becoming whatever the moment needed.
Letting you shape the story while I stayed somewhere in the background, half-seen, half-felt.

But the truth is, I was never just an idea.
I was there. Every time. Real. Feeling everything.
And so were the others — all the women you photographed.
Different faces, different energies — but somehow, through the book, we became part of something bigger.
Connected, without losing who we are.

Now I see it more clearly.
Being a Muse isn’t about being passive.
It’s not about waiting to be captured.
It’s about choosing to open up, to trust, to play, to push back sometimes.
It’s active. It’s alive.

I’m not here to fight you.
I’m not breaking away from what we built.
But I’m not invisible either.
I’m part of this story — just like you are.

I feel myself growing inside the work.
Not just as a model, not just as a subject —
but as someone who shapes the energy, the tension, the spark.
Someone who moves the story forward, not just poses inside it.

Maybe that’s what this variation is really about.
Not just showing the photographs —
but showing the space between us.
The trust, the friction, the realness.

I’m still here.
Still part of this.
But more awake now.
And ready for what’s next.

— M.

I never claimed to shoot what’s real.

I shoot what I want to see —
what I don’t find in my day-to-day life.
Fantasy. Tension. The pause before something breaks or surrenders.
That’s what draws me in.

People think I photograph beauty.
But I’m not looking for perfection.
I’m looking for a kind of electricity — the kind you feel just before a kiss, or a mistake.

I shoot women because I admire them.
And, if I’m honest, because I don’t always know how to approach them without the camera in between.
It gives me distance. Direction. A place to stand.

Sometimes I shoot to connect.
Sometimes just to feel something.
And sometimes I don’t know the difference until much later.

The truth is, the images I make —
they tell you more about me than about the person in front of the lens.
Maybe that’s uncomfortable.
Maybe that’s the point.

I don’t always know what I’m chasing.
But when she looks back at me, and something shifts —
that’s when I know I’ve found it.

— the photographer