Why portraits matter
I did not come to photography because I loved cameras.
I came to it because I learned how quickly a moment becomes memory.
Before I understood photography, I photographed my father.
At the time, I had no idea how important those photographs would become.
I was simply beginning. He sat for me willingly, without question.
Months later, he became ill.
And then he was gone.
The photographs are not perfect.
But they are his.
They hold the way he stood, the way he looked at me, the way he occupied a room.
The things memory slowly struggles to keep.
Growing up, my relationship with my father was not always simple.
Like most relationships that matter, it carried both love and complexity.
After he died, I listened to the stories people told about him. Through their memories, I began to understand parts of him I had never fully seen.
I realised then that no life can be reduced to a single story.
And no photograph is ever only about what someone looked like.
It is about presence.
About a moment that can never happen again.
Over time, I began to understand something else.
The value of a photograph rarely reveals itself on the day it is taken.
It reveals itself years later.
When a child searches for a photograph of a parent.
When a family gathers around an album.
When someone you love is no longer standing beside you.
That is why portraits matter.
Not because they are perfect.
Not because they flatter.
Not because they win awards or gather praise.
Portraits matter because they become part of the story we leave behind.
They remind us who was here.
Who was loved.
Who shaped our lives.
And sometimes, they become the closest thing we have to holding a moment again.
Every portrait I create is made with that understanding.
Not for today alone.
But for the years when the photograph becomes more valuable than anyone could have imagined.
