Form & Character

I’ve never believed in perfection.
Perfection is sterile, predictable, and far from real life.
What I look for when I photograph someone is the pause — that split second when the mask slips and something true appears, uninvited.
A glance. A breath. A hesitation.
That’s when the portrait begins.

I don’t direct much. I ask them to breathe, to move a little, to forget the camera.
The light does its part.
It shapes the face, the body, the skin and I just wait.
There’s always a moment when the air changes, when presence becomes visible.
It’s quiet, almost invisible, but if you pay attention, you can feel it.

We live in a time where everyone is performing for someone — a phone, a feed, an algorithm.
These portraits try to do the opposite: to stop performing.
To let the person behind the image simply exist.
Sometimes they laugh, sometimes they drift away, sometimes they stare back like they’re seeing you too.
And maybe that’s the whole point of photography not to show what people look like, but to show that they were here.

Every face is a story.
Every portrait is proof that someone allowed themselves to be seen for real, if only for a second.

Photographed by Javier Shirley

— Round Circle Magazine