I've spent more than thirty-five years learning how to see.
At first, I thought I was learning how to make photographs.
Looking back, I realise it was always about something more human.
It was about paying attention.
To people.
To what is said.
And what isn't.
What does it mean to truly see someone?
That question has taken me from newspaper newsrooms to street children in Nicaragua, from indigenous midwives in Guatemala to home births in New York.
Different places. Different lives.
And everywhere, people let me in.
Into their homes.
Their work.
Their celebrations.
Their most vulnerable moments.
I learned that seeing someone begins with connection.
Somewhere along the way, I became interested in the invisible.
During my Master of Fine Arts, I stepped away from photography.
I worked with video, sound and printmaking.
Different tools.
The same curiosity.
How do you make visible what can only be felt?
When I returned to photography, I returned differently.
I brought with me years spent living and working across cultures, a Master of Fine Arts and, later, my training as an ICF coach.
But perhaps the most important thing I learned cannot be put on a résumé:
People reveal themselves when they feel safe enough not to perform.
Today, the question has become even more interesting.
Sometimes, we've changed and the world hasn't caught up.
Sometimes, others see something in us we haven't yet recognised ourselves.
I'm fascinated by that space:
between who we are,
how we see ourselves
and how the world sees us.
Sometimes I pick up a camera.
Sometimes I sit down for a conversation.
Sometimes I tell a story.
The form changes.
The attention doesn't.
That is The Art of Being Seen.
What stays with me
I've been fortunate to exhibit internationally, publish books and receive awards.
I'm grateful for all of it.
But what stays with me are the quieter moments.
Someone looking at a portrait and saying:
“I've never seen myself like this before.”
Someone leaving a conversation seeing something differently.
The trust people have given me. The stories they have shared.
Those are the moments I remember.
Perhaps learning to see changes everything.
After all these years, I'm still curious.
About people.
The lives we build.
The choices we make.
The stories we carry.
And what becomes possible when we begin to see ourselves — and each other — differently.
Perhaps that is what I've been looking for all along.