The Coincidence

It all started with maternity leave.

For the first time in my career, I wasn’t running toward the next project. I was sitting still, tied to my son and sorting through an archive..

Despite my natural chaos and general disorganization, I kept my archive carefully, everything filed by year. The plan was to put together a portfolio quickly and get back to work.

Quickly didn’t happen. Every shoot pulled me back into the moment: I remembered exactly how I felt then: the fear, the doubt, the rush of it. I kept sending messages to my past self: don’t be afraid, don’t doubt yourself, you’ll get there. I know, because I’m you, and it worked.

I kept going deeper.

At some point the chaotic mass of work, which I had no idea how to connect, suddenly started forming a pattern. I wanted to hold it in place before it dissolved.

The first visual coincidence looked like an accident. Then there were more and more. I fell like Alice into the rabbit hole.

Turned out, I had been working in chiaroscuro for years without knowing the word. When I first heard it, I asked, genuinely: what is that?

I had been using Vermeer. Caravaggio’s diagonal baroque light. Hopper’s space. Not because I studied them, because the light took me there itself.

I didn’t study this. I already knew it

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