I didn’t start photographing to become a photographer. I started because I needed a way to look more slowly.

My first camera was a small Olympus compact. Nothing special, technically speaking. But it was the first time I chose to look at the world through something that wasn’t just my eyes. It was instinctive, quiet, unambitious. I photographed without thinking about results, only about presence.

In my hometown there was an elderly photographer. He wasn’t famous, and he didn’t talk about careers or styles. He talked about light, patience, and waiting — about being there before pressing the shutter. He never tried to teach me photography; he taught me how to stay still.

Then came a long silence.

For years, photography disappeared from my life. No cameras, no projects, no images. Not because I stopped loving it, but because life moved elsewhere — work, time, responsibility. The gaze remained, but without a tool.

When photography returned, it didn’t come back as a hobby. It came back as a necessity.

The Fujifilm X-T4 first, then the X-T5, were not upgrades. They were a return — a way to reconnect with a way of seeing that had been waiting quietly in the background.

Today, photography for me is not about capturing moments. It’s about what remains when the noise fades: places, traces, and presences that don’t ask to be noticed.

What Lies Beneath was born from this. Not as a project to explain something, but as a space to observe — slowly, honestly — what emerges when you look long enough.