Fragments of Light Nº 7: What you see is what you get.

I recently had a long phone conversation with a friend. She's a photographer, like me – and she sounded tired. Not physically, but on that deeper frequency where thoughts reside. We talked about pictures that are starting to look alike, about portraits that tell less of a story than before. About the feeling of going in circles. And about the question of how to move forward without losing yourself.

It's a topic that concerns many photographers I know. Because at some point, once the technique is mastered and the eye is trained, a different struggle begins: the struggle for relevance. How do you create something new without diluting your own style? How do you stay contemporary without surrendering to the prevailing trends? And how do you deal with the growing distance that increasingly develops between photographer and subject when curiosity turns into routine?

I still remember my early days in portrait photography vividly. When I started photographing people, it was like a discovery. Not just of faces – but of the encounter itself. There was a special energy in the room, an invisible current emanating from a glance or the way someone held their shoulders. Every shoot was a little adventure. Unpredictable. Vibrant. And yes – exciting in a wonderful way. I didn't want it to end. I'm searching for that energy again today. And I wonder if it's disappeared or if I've forgotten how to allow it in.

Perhaps this is what Anselm Kiefer meant when he said in an interview that every artist is in a constant state of flux between origin and departure. Those who remain too confined to themselves become merely decorative. Those who break free too much lose their depth. The dilemma is well-known: remaining true to one's audience can come at the expense of further development. Seeking the new risks becoming misunderstood. Kiefer attempted to unite both – through material, scale, and myth. So, what do we photographers do when the format is predetermined, the setting clear, and the gaze too often practiced?

Great portrait photographers—Richard Avedon, Diane Arbus, Peter Lindbergh—had their methods for breaking this cycle. Some sought out radically new faces, others traveled to places where no one knew them. Still others changed the lighting or focal length, not because it was technically necessary, but because they wanted to disrupt their own perception. It was never about change for the sake of change. It was about sharpening one's own perception—and reclaiming wonder.

And so you keep trying it yourself. One minute you're shooting portraits, the next you find yourself in a nude shoot. For years you only shoot in black and white, believing it to be the purest form – and then suddenly you start to lose yourself in color. Not because you want to follow a trend, but because it suddenly feels right.
At the same time, though, the little obstacles grow. The effort to find new faces – fresh, untouched – becomes a drawn-out game: writing, exchanging messages, making phone calls. Then weeks of radio silence. No appointment. Or one is arranged, but too late – too late for the moment that could have been something special. And this happens too: you're no longer looking forward to the shoot because the face has already been photographed by five other people. Photographers who repeat the same image they've been taking for years – just with a new surface.
And then you suddenly lose interest. Not out of arrogance. But because it no longer feels like an encounter, but like reproduction.
Do others experience this too? Is it part of the process?
Because in normal life I'm not like that.

And yet, I sometimes catch myself beginning a shoot like a doctor starting a consultation. Precise, polite, efficient – ​​but with an emotional distance that was once foreign to me. Perhaps it's a form of desensitization. Perhaps it's a defense mechanism. Perhaps it's simply the price of a profession that consists of encounters. Because every face that isn't entirely new to you becomes a variation on an old image.

Perhaps that's also why I keep returning to the M. It doesn't allow for hasty work. It demands attention, conscious seeing—almost as if viewing the world through a slowed-down medium. A return to the essence of portraiture.
The view through the rangefinder—or through the Visoflex when I don't feel like putting on my glasses—remains minimalist: no superimposed lines, no flashing numbers, no animated histograms.
What you see is what you get , as they say. And sometimes that's exactly enough.

And then there are those rare moments. When something opens up in a person's face, when their expression suddenly becomes fragile, or falls completely still in my mind. When everything is just right for a moment – ​​the light, the posture, the gaze. These moments remind me why I started in the first place. And that what we're searching for is perhaps never truly lost. But simply needs to be rediscovered occasionally.

What helps? The search, I think. For new people, for unfamiliar perspectives, for a sense of unease within one's own system. Perhaps that's what ultimately unites artists: not style, but the urge, this drive to constantly be in motion. And the knowledge that the most recognizable aspect of one's own work is often not the visible – but the invisible. The attitude. The doubts. The time one takes before pressing the shutter.