Notes from the darkroom.

#27: on books

Books shaped the photographer I wanted to become.

Not the one I was then, not the one I am today, but the one I dreamt of being when hunger, doubt and ambition were more present than craft.

Before I knew what my own work would look like, I learnt through the pages of others. Their frames, their choices, their grit.

Studied them.
Not as objects. As possibilities.

In those early years, for the young reporter pulling long days, short nights, chasing the next assignment to make ends meet, there was no stability, no safety net, but no compromise on books either.

The place I kept returning to was a small independent art-book store run by a couple who lived for books. You could feel it in the way they spoke about them, touched them, curated them. I spent hours there. Talking, listening, learning.

They paid attention to what I was doing, even when I barely knew how to talk about my own work. They offered to hang a few of my prints. That gesture stayed with me.

One day, the images on the wall changed.

They were photographs I knew well, pulled straight from a newly published book, by someone I deeply admired. We talked about the pictures, about the book, about what it takes to build a body of work that holds. The owners smiled and said they knew the photographer well. Friends, actually. The man lived nearby. They handed me his number.

We ended up sharing darkroom sessions and improvised lunches, the kind where you listen more than you speak and learn what generosity looks like. He gave advice without pretending to teach; contacts without making promises. He gave me a path when I didn’t have one.

That encounter grew out of a book and it changed more than I expected.

Beyond the struggles, there was recognition. Assignments. Publications. Momentum. Just not the kind that leads to a book. I came close once —a famous writer’s project— but it went to a Magnum photographer.

Fair enough; I’ll take the compliment anyway. Plan B doesn’t get remembered; the dream stayed untouched.

Couple of decades later; wildlife. The situation is different. I have the material, the endurance, even the means to fund a modest edition. But no appetite to spend months in front of layout software, or the right person to carry that part with me.

The book stayed out of reach again, for different reasons.

Now I find myself deep in another project. One that feels nothing like the previous ones.
America. Exposed, unposed.

Film again. Craft again. A long road, slow accumulation. Work built through distance and time. Images, notes, encounters. Stories told and left unsaid.

But…

Who reads books today?

Why make something physical when the world already scrolls past everything online?

Doesn’t the project already live through the website?

No, the website is something else entirely.
It’s a portfolio for people I meet on the road, a way to show what I do when they ask, a tool for the journey.

The book is different.
The book is time slowed down.

You sit, open it carefully. You follow the sequence at a different pace. You absorb an image and resist the temptation to jump ahead. You wonder what waits on the next page, whether it echoes the last one, whether it contradicts it.

It becomes a conversation between your own memories, your expectations and what’s actually there. A book holds you still. It makes you stay.

I used to doubt whether I’d ever make a book.

And now all that’s left is to finish the road and give the work the form it deserves.