For many years, most – if not all – photographs that I took lacked people in them. I was not aware of this until the publisher of a Romanian magazine, who accepted an article of mine about Doha’s Al Corniche in Qatar, pointed it out to me. This got me thinking and, soon enough, I realized that, for me, it was more important to capture a locale in its unspoiled beauty, without any “interferences” from passersby. What mattered was the history behind that site and not the people who lived there!
Al Corniche, Doha, Qatar (2006)
Although, even now, before I snap a shot, I sometimes wait for people to get out of my picture, I also try to look at the histories of the people who lived or have lived in the different places that fancy my interest.
Chinatown, Bangkok, Thailand (2006)
Some years back I read Paul Coelho’s The Alchemist and became aware that each one of us, no matter of nationality, religion, or skin colour, have a “personal legend,” something that one has always wanted to achieve in life, but never really got around to achieving it. Maybe this is something worth immortalizing.
