The only way it doesn't hurt

Part Two

For me, time’s just another thing I manage. Like light. Like framing. Like breath. It stretches, contracts, flickers in and out depending on the project I’m in, the deadline I’m chasing, the shot I need. It’s not soft—it’s sharp. It’s a scalpel. You either cut through or get cut.

And I’ve always been good at staying ahead of it.

That’s what work is for me. Not passion. Not freedom.
It’s control.

There’s something about photography that makes sense in a way nothing else does. You find the right angle, adjust the aperture, frame the chaos into something clean. You get to choose what to focus on. You get to crop out everything else.

That’s the part no one talks about. Everyone’s obsessed with the idea of capturing beauty, of preserving memory.
But for me—
It’s always been about isolation.
Stillness.

Because the second you start letting life bleed into the frame, it stops being a photograph and becomes something else. A reminder. A trigger. A door you don’t want to walk back through.

I don’t want reminders.

I want precision.

I built my career on clarity—portraits that say more in silence than words ever could. Eyes that tell the truth even when the rest of the body lies. People call it depth, honesty, vulnerability. They don’t realise I’m just watching from a distance. Always have.

Even when I’m holding the camera, I’m not in the picture.

Never will be.

I’ve worked with some of the most complicated faces in the world. Models who don’t speak a word and somehow still say everything. I’ve shot in cities that never sleep and war zones dressed as art installations. I’ve been praised for how I “see things others don’t.”

But the truth is, I stopped seeing for myself a long time ago.

Now it’s all technique. All instinct. All survival.

It’s better this way.

When you let something—someone—slip past that lens, you lose control. You make space for ache. For memory. For guilt. And there’s too much of that already hiding in the corners of this apartment, in the folders I’ve never reopened, in the faces I don’t photograph anymore.

There was a time I cared. Deeply.
Too deeply, maybe.

But caring gets heavy.

So I put it down.

And I picked up the camera instead.

By the time I get to the studio, the sky’s turned a sullen grey—London’s default mood. The sort of dull, washed-out light that makes everything look like a half-finished thought.

My studio sits on the top floor of an old converted warehouse, tucked behind a bookstore and a boarded-up florist. The kind of place you wouldn’t look twice at if you didn’t know what was inside. I like that. Privacy disguised as neglect.

Inside, it’s a different story.

Tall ceilings, exposed brick, the occasional soft hum of fluorescent light. The walls are lined with mood boards—some neat, others layered with scraps of torn paper, pinned polaroids, dried flowers, scraps of fabric I picked up in Tokyo or Marseille or some other shoot city I’ve stopped keeping track of. There’s an old Leica hanging from a hook near the desk, a roll of film half-used. The scent of chemicals still lingers faintly from the darkroom tucked into the back corner.

Organised chaos. Controlled, curated. Like everything else in my life.

A place built to work in, not to linger.