‘You’re a ghost of this place’

(2022)
Digital photographs

This small photographic series reflects a universal struggle with confinement—physical, systemic, and internal. It was produced just before shutting down the photographic studio I called both work and home from 2018 to early 2022.

When I started my business, I was bursting with excitement for the journey ahead, until I realised it didn’t resonate with me. Launching an expensive venture alone, without financial support, often means compromising on values and freedom. My studio hosted small and medium productions for fashion, advertising, and film, alongside the controversies and materialistic principles that overwhelm these industries. Over time, I became disillusioned, feeling a growing sense of detachment and lack of purpose.

In addition to this, the space was too big for me to manage and constantly filled with strangers. I couldn’t afford to leave it unattended for more than a few days, sacrificing the basic need to feel at home and to rest, as well as traveling to see the world through my own eyes rather than through the polished narratives of the products emerging from my studio.

I wanted out, yet I was desperate to succeed, to prove something to myself. More than the business itself, it was my attachment to the space that trapped me. A co-worker once said, “You’re the ghost of this place,” and they were right. When the first lockdown hit in 2020, little changed for me, my life was already confined.

Living there, I felt my body and mind dissolve into the space. My skin seemed to merge with the walls, as if I had become part of a breathing, cocoon-like organism. And yet, despite the overwhelming sense of entrapment and identity loss, those years became some of the most valuable training I’ve ever had.

The emotions I wanted to capture in these photos, confinement, dissolution, longing, resonate beyond my personal experience. They echo what so many felt during long periods of isolation and restriction, as well as the quiet constraints we live with every day. We are trapped within our spaces, within systems designed to keep us running, hoping that if we work hard enough, we will one day earn the right to simply exist, to pay our bills without struggle, to make time for love, for friendship, for life.