Manifesto
Let’s talk about the lie we keep telling ourselves.
Documentary photography — we call it the noble path, don’t we? Let’s be honest: it barely survives. It limps along on grants and goodwill, seen by a sliver of people who already care — the festival crowds, the photobook collectors, the choir we’re preaching to. But it is the “good” lens: it bears witness, drags forgotten stories into the light, gives voice to the voiceless.
Beautiful.
Commercial photography? That’s the villain. The evil sellout. It seduces, distorts, packages truth into something prettier, easier, more profitable. We sneer at it. Yet those are the images that move. They flood feeds, dominate billboards, invade the scrolling thumb of someone who’s never heard of Magnum.
They reach people.
This tension is where I stand — in the crack between good and evil. My documentary work was born from a need to see clearly; my commercial work takes that same eye and weaponises it — not to deceive, but to reach. To make you stop, feel, think. To surprise you. To give you wonder.
Every saint has a shadow. Every sinner, a sliver of light.
So who would you trust to change how people think?