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I was raised in a theater company during the 1970s.  My father, a photographer and my mother, an actress, passed on to me, the intense need to look deeper. The way he looked at her through the camera lens, the way my mother got lost in her characters....  I wanted to look at life that way.  As a teenager, I fell in love with movies, with the weird ones, the artsy ones, the classics, and so of course, I became a film director. As such, my focus has been on the human condition. Not only telling stories but capturing emotions. Even though Photography and filmmaking compliment each other,  as my career took off, I stopped shooting photos. I would shoot on occasions but stopped searching for her. I forgot how good it felt to look through the lens and stop time. But she would remind me. Every time I was in front of an amazing photograph, my heart would skip a beat.

 

Last year, like lots of people out there, I went through some life-changing experiences.  Some good ones and some harsh,  but at the end of the stick photography was there to raise me up.  We connected again, even deeper this time, and I started shooting every day.  Learning became an obsession. I even started shooting characters I stumble upon in the streets of LA and I discovered a deep passion for shooting portraits. The ability to capture the soul of a person, the light of any human being. What a beautiful gift to live my life by!   

 

It was as if photography was my best friend, but was secretly in love with me all along and never told me.

 

Now we are finally dating!

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Ps. I included this portrait of my son Marcel and his mother Mariem. Not only because it is one of the most important pictures I’ve taken in my life, but because it was one of those times when photography was trying to remind me how good it felt.