DMANTA

There is a moment in every shoot I cannot plan.

It usually comes when the person in front of me has stopped thinking about the camera. When the music is playing and we have long since stopped talking about the shoot, and started talking about the sister who moved away, or the job they never really wanted, or a morning from childhood when the world was still simple. In that moment something changes in their face. Something opens. And I press the shutter.

Not because the light is perfect. But because I am seeing something most people never get to see in themselves.

I have been photographing since I was ten years old. Back then I asked for a digital camera for my birthday without really knowing why. I only knew that I looked at people in a certain way that others noticed before I understood it myself. "You look at them as if you can see their spirit, not just their face", they said. People told me this often as a child. I thought it was normal. That everyone looked that way.

It was not normal. It was a gift. And it took years before I understood that photography is the only place where I can truly use it.

I do not photograph faces. I photograph what waits behind the face when someone is ready to let it show. That is the difference between a photo and a portrait. A photo documents. A portrait remembers. Not how someone looked. But who they were in that one moment.

My shoots take longer than they need to. I play music. I ask about life. I share my own. Sometimes we talk for twenty minutes before I even raise the camera. Not because I am wasting time, but because I know: the image I am looking for does not appear when someone poses. It appears when someone forgets they are being photographed.

A close friend once told me, at a moment when I was doubting myself and unsure whether my images were worth anything: "Never doubt whether portrait photography is the right path. Can you not see how you capture the souls of people in these images?" That evening I looked at my photographs for a long time. And for the first time I saw what she meant.

I grew up in Switzerland with two cultures, three languages and a gaze that sometimes goes further than I intend. Perhaps that is why I photograph people the way I do. Because I know what it feels like to stand between worlds. Because I know that behind every face there is a story that deserves to be seen.

Every shoot leaves behind more than an image. A story I did not know. A person I now know. An encounter that stays. That is the gift of this work. I carry a piece of every person I meet with me. That may sound like a lot. But anyone who has truly been seen knows exactly what I mean.

If you are ready to be seen, I am ready to look.