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The kind of photography that speaks to me

/…/ But there are moments when it’s a good thing to be vulnerable. To be able to breathe in this space of change and possibility. To take distance from the emotional drama in our heads and watch it like we would watch a soap opera. To suspend judgment and just notice. To let it hurt for a while.

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New Blog Address

I have just transferred my blog from florinpopa.blog to florinpopa.eu. The old site redirects to the new one, as you can see in the address bar. I would kindly ask those who want to keep on seeing my new posts to follow the new site. There will be no more updates at the old blog…

Finding Peace

Deep in the forest, where sunlight miraculously reaches through a maze of branches and warms up the budding flowers hidden in the shadow of old trees. The footpath lies ahead like an invitation. On the rocky ocean shore, watching the sunset and listening to the wind singing its strange incantations. A song of hope, loss,…

Carnival

Just before the first spring flowers pop out of the snow and before Lent, the 40-day fasting period before Easter, something colorful and outrageous happens in villages and towns across Belgium. It’s carnival time and people come together to celebrate in excess, just as later on they used to congregate to celebrate in fasting and…

Through the Looking Glass

It’s been a few weeks now that I’ve been working on my photo project focusing on autism. So far I’ve visited eight participants, some of them two or three times. I’d like to share some observations on how it is to actually do this as compared to what I imagined or expected. I need to…

Shadows in Monochrome

I’ve been this forest once. The majestic canopy silently growing in the night. The ever-changing winds of winter. The moon and the stars. The deep shadows of trees beneath trees. The trembling leaf ready to fall. All life unfolding quietly. The beating heart of the woods. Sometimes I remember being the forest. This week’s Lens-Artists…

Cultivating Attention

Photography cultivates a certain awareness and attention to detail. You walk on the street, all senses awake. There’s this detail here and that situation over there. You can see things developing into something that could be a good photo. You anticipate. You position yourself in the right place and wait for the right moment. Sometimes…

Photo Project: Autism Stories

There’s something miraculous about things that we dream of, that exist entirely in our heads, and that at some point become tangible because we act on them. In fact, we do this countless times everyday. I wake up and I think about brushing my teeth. Then I actually do it (although it may take a…

Looking Forward

The end of the year and beginning of a new one are conventions. Collectively, we could have divided time and established special moments any other way. For some reason, it was a moment in the middle of winter that most of the world now celebrates as the start of something new. And, despite its arbitrariness,…

A Year In 12 Photos

This is my last post for 2022. December is often a month of reckoning, revisiting, and trying to make sense of what happened. I need to accept how things are in order to go ahead and be prepared for how they could be. I need to make peace with how things are in order to…

Bequest

Thank you for all the gifts The ones that I asked for, the ones I didn’t ask for The ones I didn’t even know were there That cup of cocoa That night train across the mountains That uncontrollable anger Those boxes under the Christmas tree The dark butterflies of helplessness in my stomach Those uplifting…

Playing With Texture

Textures speak to that deeper part of us that reacts and wakes up to sounds, touch, color, light and shadow. No words needed. Words can describe, explain, interpret, justify, but the emotional connection is already there. Running my hand across the bark of tree trunks as I find my way into the forest, my eyes…

Exposure

I started out, as most of us do, being overly preoccupied with sharpness and focus. Of course, there’s a place for sharpness and focus and some compositions require them more than others. But there is also lots of scope for playing with them and sometimes leaving them behind. This is true even for documentary photography,…

The Call of the Mountains

This week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, hosted by Amy, is all about mountains. In the mountains, I’ve felt at peace, exhilarated, grateful, exhausted, scared, lost. I walked endless trails that took me way out of my comfort zone. I found myself up on the mountain, in the wild, as it was getting dark, wondering how will…

Tender is the night

I suddenly woke up as if an alarm was going off somewhere. A high-pitched noise drilling holes into the fabric of reality. But there is nothing. The silence is complete, definitive, almost painful. I dreamt of you. Again. You were looking at me with that look of calm detachment. Not even disappointment. Not even resentment.…

Single Photo Stories: Autumn Sun

There’s something discreetly glorious in this lazy October sunset. Backlit fallen leaves and mushrooms. The almost imperceptible breeze. The buzz of insects slowly rising through the forest like a mist. I am sitting in a small forest clearing with the sun on my face. There’s nothing I can add to the scene, nothing that can…

Flowers bursting out of concrete

I spent a few days in Amsterdam attending a workshop on visual storytelling. I have a special interest in storytelling so I was quite excited to sign up, especially as the workshop was held by a photographer I knew and admired.

Rainy night

It rains over the city like a curtain falling after a big show. Contours are blurred out. Light trails lit up the night. Colors dissolve into one another. Hurried silhouettes pass by. Summer is gone. The irreversibility of this simple fact is now made concrete, almost painfully tangible. There’s no going back to that part…

Borders

There are borders that are meant to keep people in. They prevent people from traveling to see how life looks on the other side. When you see something different, you compare and evaluate. Terms of comparison are threatening for regimes that are built on delusions of grandeur and uniqueness: “Why would you even want to…

Single Photo Stories: The Oak Forest

It’s starting to get dark. All of a sudden, an evening breeze breaks the almost perfect silence of the forest. It moves millions of leaves and brings them to life. There’s a cosmic sigh carried by millions of voices. A long out-breath. A muffled voice trying hard to pronounce something. I cannot understand what it…

Single Photo Stories – new weekly series

I am starting a weekly series focused on stories built around single photos. I will keep all stories under 100 words. Being concise is a skill, probably one of the most difficult to acquire. Stories can be directly linked to the photo (how it was taken, what was happening) or they can simply use the…

All that sunshine

Photography has taught me to pay attention. Pay attention to details but also to how these details combine to form a meaningful scene. Pay attention to the quality of light and the juxtaposition of colors and textures. Pay attention to what happens out there not just in my head.

The kind of photography that speaks to me

Anne’s question for this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge is “What’s your photographic groove?”. Well, that’s a question I’ve been asking myself quite a lot lately. And there’s a gap between the kind of photography that I’m currently doing (and feeling comfortable doing) and the kind of photography that would speak to me the most.

Triptych

Since Sarah (from Travel with me) invited us to share three of our favorite photos, I thought about what I would choose and, more broadly, about how we relate critically to our own work. The photos that tend to stay with me are those that tell a story that’s meaningful to me. Those that reconnect…

Facing the wave

The tide is coming in like a tsunami. The beach has been swallowed by the rising sea. There’s a storm brewing somewhere on the horizon. The waves keep getting higher and stronger. They splash against the concrete wall, creating foam tentacles descending upon unsuspecting passers-by.

Summer turns to high

The sun emerges slowly from the sea, hesitating as if the heaviness of the water is holding it back. The small beach is full of crabs that were washed ashore by the tide and eaten by the seagulls. One crab carcass has been flipped over and now it catches the morning sunlight. There’s nobody around.…

Building a photo project

If there’s something that connects the various dots of my posts here, it’s my interest in storytelling. I don’t mean the technical aspects of telling a story, although those are important too. I mean the reasons we tell stories, the way they change us, and the roles they take in our lives. There are many…

Thoughts on blogging – update

Three months ago I wrote about blogging and about the importance of starting from the reality of the present situation. I’d like to follow up on that. In fact, I’d like to revisit some of the things I’ve written there and add some new points.

Shades of blue

It gets late and the tide is coming in strong. I am at the water’s edge, watching my feet slowly disappear under water. The breeze is carrying smells of faraway life and death, of drifting away and never coming back. Seaweed. Decomposing creatures washed ashore. Salt. Cold. Fear. Calm. Fantastic shapes in the sand, resisting…

Introverted doors

This week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge, hosted by Sylvia, is all about doors and doorways. Doors. We open and close them dozens of times each day. We use them to organize our space. To get access. To open to the world. To protect from the world. But there are also doors that won’t open. They are…

I need your help

Let me cut straight to the chase: I’d like you to tell me how, in your opinion, I can improve my blog. What would you like to see more of and less of? What options could be added? What sort of layout and organization of content could help?

Minimalism

Almost anything can be improved by removing stuff. Simplifying it. Getting rid of the clutter. Then getting rid of even more clutter, which at first glance may have seemed important. It works with books, photographs, relationships, or lives. We are compulsive hoarders of sensations, emotions, objects. We commit to impossible schedules and we have impossible…

The reality of stories

In my native language, one standard formulation to start a folk tale is “There was, once upon a time, because if it weren’t we wouldn’t tell about it”. There are different versions of this formulation, some of them going on and on about a miraculous past and place where the events took place. “If it…

All paths lead back to where I stand

All this unchecked wild growth. This gracious abandonment. These plant seeds flying around, offering themselves to anybody, offering themselves to nobody. This whirlwind of life coming together in this very moment, unplanned yet fully in sync. Not asking for a witness, not needing to be acknowledged, just being there.

The past present

I woke up early, too early, like so many times before. There’s a beautiful sunrise out there, for anybody who’d care to witness it. Not me. I am struggling to wake up after I struggled to go back to sleep. Not feeling quite ready to start the day, yet far away from that coziness of…

Blue

Somewhere towards mid-April, this Belgian forest gets covered in millions of bluebells. In the sunlight, trees draw intricate shadow patterns on the carpet of flowers that extends far into the distance. I went there early in the morning, about a week ago. At first, some high-altitude clouds were covering the rising sun. There was a…

The spring in color

It’s the high time of spring. There’s a continuous explosion of color. I have watched the small wood anemones come and go, just days ago. Now they’re already replaced by the bluebells. Some patches of forest are still making the transition from white to blue and, for a while, they coexist. I like to go…

Thoughts on blogging / Quelques pensées sur le blogging (EN/FR)

Version Française ci-dessous Why did you start blogging? What motivates you to keep on posting? What did you learn from it? I would really like to know what your experience is. Meanwhile, this is what I can tell you about myself. In a way, it’s a follow-up to a post I’ve written a few months…

Earth calling

This week’s Lens-Artists Challenge, hosted by Amy, is Earth Story. Here is my story of spring, light, and color.

That’s how the light gets in

The birds they sang At the break of day Start again I heard them say Don’t dwell on what has passed away Or what is yet to be

Night flight

This Belgian village counts just a handful of houses, meandering across the hills. In front of the church, there’s a hand-written sign: “big fire on Saturday”. That’s about all the detail. Here, everybody knows everybody. And everybody knows where everything happens. It’s the communal bonfire at the end of the carnival. The burning of winter…

A spec of blood on a Sunday dress

I’ve created here my little space of self-expression. I worked on it. I tried to post regularly, even when I felt tired, depressed, or simply didn’t feel like it. But no space is impervious to life and to death. I couldn’t write anything last week. Since the 24th of February, I have had these moments…

Lights out

As the sun goes down, as the shadows grow longer, I find myself among the trees. Alone but not lonely. Just being there, noticing how the light changes, how the smell of the forest changes. There is nothing else to be done, nowhere else I need to be. Just breathing here with the trees. Being…

The Secret Life of Trees

Alone at the edge of the forest. Sap quietly circulating everywhere, like a myriad of creeks finding their way through every twist and turn. Rising through the trunks, splitting at every crossroads, distributing itself evenly through the branches. Feeding everything. A sea of trees communicating and cooperating through subterranean networks of fungi. One giant organism…

The dead-end

There’s a previous part to this, available here. I get off the train feeling thirsty and scattered as if I couldn’t put myself together and I left an undefined part of me in that compartment. I breathe in the cold morning air, petting a stray dog, and then I start walking on the side of…

The night train

I cannot remember how long I’ve been in here. The monotonous sound of the train wheels turning incessantly and hitting those tiny separations between rail segments. Lights of forgotten villages flashing across the window. Travelers with faces emaciated by tiredness and loneliness, who move like sleepwalkers through the train, looking for a seat that’s always…

It’s raining at the end of the world

It’s a new year. I found it hard to mobilize myself to write. It’s not that I lost motivation or inspiration. It’s the rain, the gloominess, the lack of sleep, the time-consuming agitation of life. It’s the wild, mixed emotions. Thinking about what was and what could have been. Oh yes, it’s definitely the rain…

Serenity

I sometimes find myself looking for serenity as if it were a moment of grace detached from the here and now. I suspect it happens to most of us. Serenity becomes a way of getting away from problems and finding a little bubble of comfort. A holiday thing. The problem with this is that holidays…

The stories we live in

I would lie if I said that I started this blog having a detailed plan for going forward. But one thing I knew well: it would be about the spellbinding power of stories. It would be about how stories take hold of us, enlighten us or push us into submission, make us happy or miserable.…

Human signals through the fog [English/Français]

It’s 4 am and it feels like the day will never come. It may come on another planet, where things still go on the way they always used to. The sun will rise and the myriad creatures of that planet will bask in the morning light, stretch, and warm their bodies. Down here, it feels…

Mother forest

What makes you feel at home, safe, and grounded? What places, times, and conditions do it for you? I’ve felt unsafe a few times in my life, but it almost never happened in the forest. Even if it was far away from the beaten path, or getting dark, or otherwise far from the familiar and…

Photography as meditation [English/Français]

There’s nothing to pushing the shutter button. It takes a fraction of a second. Unless you’re using a film camera, you can take as many shots as you like, delete most of them, and then take some more. You can do it as an ego-affirming gesture, as yet another form of narcissist expression. You can…

Traveling the world

I woke up before anybody else. Like a sleepwalker, I prepared my backpack before fully realizing what I was doing. I took a few sips of hot coffee and I went out in the cold air. Past my neighborhood, with its smell of freshly-baked bread and its familiar streets that I can recreate in full…

The things we keep in the dark

Maybe it’s the rain. Maybe it’s the lack of good sleep. Maybe it’s the alignment of planets. The evil eye. The karmic debt. The fury of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl. A short circuit in the ancient parts of my brain, those that I share with lizards and frogs. Maybe it’s none of this crap. Whatever…

Easy Like Sunday Morning

There is fog on the river. It travels downstream as if somehow connected to the water. Vapors are rising, exuding through the pores of the earth. I’m walking along the riverbank as the sun is slowly rising behind me. From time to time I turn and watch the play of light through the trees and…

Vulnerable

I grew up in a world in which being vulnerable was a sign of weakness. Something to hide and correct as soon as possible. I grew up in a culture in which weakness and strength were seen as attributes of the individual. Weakness – a personal problem. Strength – a personal achievement. What was supposed…

Snapshots, postcards and photos

What are our photos saying? What is their real subject? Things have changed a lot since I first started playing with a camera, almost four years ago. I took a lot of bad shots. Felt tired and discouraged. Searched and experimented. Had small breakthroughs. Found myself in the right place at the right moment. Had…

What if I stop running?

The endless struggling and competing. Trying to be a good pupil, a good friend, a good lover, a good parent. Constantly pushing myself to the limit. Feeling that it’s never good enough. Always running towards something, which means always running away from something. What if I stop spinning the wheel? Sometimes I am just so…

The little things

“Perhaps it’s true that things can change in a day. That a few dozen hours can affect the outcome of whole lifetimes. And that when they do, those few dozen hours, like the salvaged remains of a burned house—the charred clock, the singed photograph, the scorched furniture—must be resurrected from the ruins and examined. Preserved.…

Closed doors

There are visible doors that remain closed forever. And there are invisible doors that become visible only when they close. Once upon a time, a man from the countryside wanted to get access to law (or justice). The access was through a guarded door. Every time he was trying to get in, the doorkeeper was…

A journey through the old Brussels

At the end of a certain Impasse Sainte Pétronille, carefully hidden just a few steps from Grand Place, there’s an old brick and wood house that holds inside much more that it gives away at first glance. Weekend tourists may know the beer tasting tours that invariably pass by the pub downstairs. The pub where…

The dark attic

The air smells of fruits getting ripe in the gentle autumn sun. The trees are full of apples and plums. I took a short trip to the village where my grandma used to live. The old house is slightly crooked and beaten by rain and winds but defiantly still there. I knew what I wanted…

Autumn mood

I’ve assembled a short series of photos about autumn light and colors. What they have in common is the presence of that soft, warm sunlight that falls on things almost horizontally. There’s a special muted intensity to it. Bright but not harsh. Caressing rather than burning. Obviously, they also have in common the forest. It’s…

Artificial Light

I used to photograph in natural settings most of the time. Natural light was a given, with some exceptions when I wanted to experiment, especially when shooting in very low light. Then I started photographing in urban settings more and more. I love walking around early in the morning or late at night. I like…

I worried

As the sun rises, the forest wakes up. There’s movement and bird chatter and the wind picks up. Although the sun is now shining through the trees, shadows still reign all around. It’s as if sunshine were confined to a narrow channel that does not allow it to spread around. The yellow summer flowers are…

A different angle

Usually, we don’t look up or down unless there’s something out of the ordinary happening. Something that disrupts our horizontal routines. We are creatures of habit. This is also reflected in photography. I don’t know about you, but most of my photos are eye level shots. This makes sense in many contexts, such as taking…

The delivery boy

This short fiction is based on a true story. I started working at 7 am. I never understood why people would order pizza just after they wake up. But they do. My trusted bike helps me rush through downtown traffic. Right now, it is my most treasured possession. Almost part of me. I’ve started learning…

The masks we wear

“We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin.”― André Berthiaume Recently I watched a documentary on Ram Dass, the psychology academic turned spiritual seeker (for lack of a better word). I know there’s a lot of pseudo-spiritual BS flying around and a lot…

A certain kind of light

“The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.”Dorothea Lange Did photography change the way you see things, the way you look at a scene? It certainly did for me, although not sure I could say exactly how. Maybe it’s a certain attention to significant details. Maybe it’s the ability…

Living with the past

A good part of our lives is spent trying to make sense of the past, to forget the past, or to relive the past. Sometimes, this is done willingly. We look up to the past and we long for what used to be. Nostalgia creeps in. Sanitized of all impurities by the passage of time,…

Moments in time

I chose a few photos that respond to this week’s Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: Your Inspiration. Each photo was taken in a context (place, time, mood) that I find inspiring. I tend to develop a strong connection with certain places and return to them again and again. However, it’s not the simple presence in those places…

Who do we blog for?

Why do we write? At first glance, it seems obvious: we write because we have something to communicate, something that we consider worth sharing. But that only invites a second question: worth sharing with whom? With anybody out there? With people that know us? Friends? One single person? Ourselves? I have more than enough followers…

Dreaming in black and white

“They shut the road through the woods Seventy years ago. Weather and rain have undone it again, And now you would never know There was once a road through the woods Before they planted the trees. It is underneath the coppice and heath, And the thin anemones. Only the keeper sees That, where the ring-dove…

In the wild

Right now I am travelling. Going from one place to another, never far from the forest and the wilderness. I have little time to write, and my mobile connection is appearing and disappearing. But I wanted to write this short post anyway. I am taking long hikes. I don’t mind being physically tired. It’s refreshing.…

Back country roads

Wandering through the backstreets of the world. Noticing. Walking with no destination. Just being present. This is in response to Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #158 (Along Back Country Roads).

Do our blogs represent us?

How much of what I write here represents me? How much of it does it really say something about who I am? I imagine that you, the one reading these words right now, are also posting more or less regularly on your blog. I assume that your posts are meant to convey something meaningful to…

Of humans and puppets

The old puppeteer looks tired. As always, after the play is over he bids farewell to the people in the audience. He thanks them for being there. He is still using his puppeteer voice when he tells them, with a smile: “If you loved the play, go tell your friends about it. If you didn’t…

Summer in Paris

A cloudy summer evening. We’re walking aimlessly through the big city. On the banks of Seine, young people are chatting around something to eat and drink. The waves created by big tourist boats fade away at their feet. The rain comes unexpectedly and we find ourselves floating in a sea of umbrellas. For a few…

Hard wall

Do you remember? There used to be a door here Its frame is etched in my brain My hands retain the memory of opening it Over and over again There used to be a door here A way of letting light in A way of letting myself out The air on the other side smelled…

Where stories take place

Traditional story openings are fascinating. First, because they show how much we share across cultures and parts of the world. Second, because they tell us a lot about the internal logic of storytelling. In its turn, this reveals how we communicate things that we consider worth transmitting over cultures and generations. Openings set the scene…

What is trauma (II)

As I’ve mentioned in my previous post, I want to take a bit more time to explore the manifestations of trauma. But first I want to clarify how this relates to the core interest of my blog – storytelling and the role of stories in how we see ourselves, see each other, and behave. Self-narratives The…

What is trauma?

Do you feel intense rage or sadness in situations that do not seem to justify such extreme reactions? Do you often feel deeply vulnerable, as if your whole skin has been peeled off and even the slightest touch can provoke a lot of pain? Do you feel helpless, stuck, captive in situations or relationships? Do…

Follow the river

It’s 6:15 and I start my trail in the forest, along the river. Morning mist hovers over the water. The air is crisp and fresh. I woke up before 5. Having prepared almost everything the evening before, I only needed a few minutes to prepare lots of coffee, wash and brush my teeth. Not yet…

Go Back

In the end We always go back to what we are And every time What we are is different from what we used to be Sooner or later The scaffolding of our self-story comes tumbling down Revealing us, raw and unscripted If only for a moment The stories live their life and then they die…

The disconnected hand

As a kid, my handwriting was quite pleasant to the eye. Childish, with big rounded letters, but easy to read and fluent. At some point during puberty or pre-adolescence, this changed. My writing became uneven and nervous, I had problems connecting some of the letters, and the lines were never really parallel. It was the…

Keep on dancing

I’ve been watching you dance you move as if you’re making love to the world quick quick slow we’ve been dancing you’re light as a feather, fluid like the ocean whirlwind of emotion sucking everything in you shapeshifter always in control and always escaping control are you staring at me or through me? it doesn’t…

Imagining ways

Coping and healing have a lot to do with imagination. Getting through hard times depends on our ability to imagine that things can be different. I say imagination, but I don’t mean a purely intellectual exercise of making up stuff. I’m talking about what you feel when you immerse yourself completely in a book or…

Letter never sent

I write this letter that I will never send you in reply to the letter I never received from you an eye for an eye, an absence for an absence I remember lying among summer flowers both of us naked in the dark I remember walking alongside you the forest path opening to infinity I…

Dead trees dancing

“At that time, I often thought that if I had had to live in the trunk of a dead tree, with nothing to do but look up at the sky flowing overhead, little by little I would have gotten used to it.” (Albert Camus) I am walking through the ghost forest. Dead pines struck by…

Reset moments

There is a basic energy that keeps us going and brings us back to ourselves, if we let it. I’m not talking about surviving and just pushing through. I am talking about healing and reconnection. I am reluctant when it comes to “spiritual” language because there’s so much misuse and abuse of it. But in…

Sanctuary

We have always needed places of refuge and protection from others and from ourselves. Without them, our individual and social wellbeing is threatened. The Abbey of Villers-la-Ville is a 40-minutes drive from Brussels, Belgium. Built in the 12th century, the abbey was abandoned in 1796 and fell into ruin. At the height of its power,…

Let go

I clung compulsively to things I thought I wanted / needed / couldn’t live without. What were those things? self-imposed standards (“if I do this at all, it needs to be great”)expectations of others (especially when they were likely to be upset or disappointed if their expectations weren’t met)my expectations (“why am I not over…

Disconnected

When I started this blog, I was in a bad place. I was deeply depressive and couldn’t see a way out of it. I had a hard time staying in the present. I felt uneasy with myself and in my own body. I had a compulsive drive to go back to what triggered this depression…

Walking in silence

“Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter.” (John Muir) I feel the same. Going in the wild means deflating the ego. Accepting ourselves as a tiny part of something large and amazing.…

Cities in silence: Brussels

I’ve done this short series that I called “Cities in silence”. It’s the silence of cities devoid of people, withdrawn, turned towards themselves. There is a certain nostalgic beauty to it. The last in this series is Brussels. This is the place where it can rain for a whole week and winter winds chill you…

Chosen paths and dead ends

We usually talk of dead ends metaphorically. What we mean is that something didn’t work out. We feel we cannot continue along a certain path. But sometimes dead ends are real endpoints – there is nothing beyond them and we cannot turn back either. And while there may be warnings along the way, there’s no…

Cities in silence: Lisbon

Home is a state of mind. I’ve never lived in Lisbon but everytime I go there I feel like I belong. Maybe it’s the light. There’s a special quality to the light of this city. The way it gently embraces everything. The lightness and openness it creates. I miss waiting for sunrise somewhere in Alfama,…

Taking photos with the body

Taking photos depends on moving, exploring, changing the perspective. Approaching possible photo compositions and subjects from different angles. Dancing around them to find a good composition. Waiting for the good moment. It’s physical. I used to favor zoom lenses. It was convenient to be able to zoom in and frame from a distance. But my…

Cities in silence: Paris

Paris wasn’t love at first sight for me. There was something about it a bit too imperial and well-to-do for my taste. I felt it was lacking humility. But I learned to love its silences, shadows, and hidden beauty during long walks. Without the usual tourist crowds, this subtle beauty of abandonment and ruin became…

The ghosts sleep tonight

I woke up suddenly in the dark. Somebody had just called my name. Was I dreaming? A long time ago, when I was living at my grandma’s and I couldn’t sleep, I used to listen to the noises coming from the attic. Mice looking for food. I knew that, but I couldn’t help imagining other…

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