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.