The hand that repeats

I have made this gesture thousands of times. Raise the camera, take a step towards whoever is in front of me, hold my breath, press. If you ask me to describe it I struggle, because for a long time now I have not thought about it. The hand does it, and meanwhile I look.

At the beginning it is not like that. Whoever starts has a head full of things: the exposure time, the focus, where to place the person, what to say to them, and meanwhile the light changes and the moment has already gone. I remember that effort well, the feeling of always arriving one instant late. Then you repeat, you get it wrong, you repeat again, and one day the body has learned what the head could not hold together.

From that moment on I forget the rules, the camera, the settings. Everything slows down, and what matters becomes the emotion in front of me, because the technique is already behind me. As long as I have to think about the tool, my attention is in the tool. When the hand knows, it returns to the person: how they breathe, where they look when I am not looking at them, when a sentence changes their face. That is where a portrait is born, long before the shot, which is only the last gesture of an attention that began earlier.

I repeat the gesture, never the result. It is what surprises me most after so many years: I do it the same way, and every time I have in front of me someone who did not exist yet, a light that will not come back the same, an expression that lasts a second. Repetition is not boring, it is the only way I know to be ready when that second arrives.

Over the years I have also learned the hand that stays still. It used to happen less, now it happens more and more often: if I do not see what is true, and what I am looking for, I do not click. I wait, or I try to create the conditions for it to happen. It is a way of respecting what I look for and the person in front of me: I know how to recognise it when it comes, and I am in no hurry to have it. Giving up a shot has become part of the gesture, and perhaps the hardest part.

I have been told that my photographs are recognisable, and I am glad, because a gaze that can be recognised is a gaze that exists. Sometimes people tell me that in my images they read reflection and depth, and now and then emotion. I do not look for these through technique. They come from having waited for what was true. To someone who looks in a hurry it may seem like always the same face, because what repeats is the way of looking. Whoever stops sees a different person every time.

I do not feel I have arrived. Even today my hand makes mistakes, the light does not cooperate, and the person in front of me needs time. I begin again, like the first time, with a gesture I know and a gaze I do not know yet.