It all began with a flower

The hibernation had been too long. I finally emerged from this long, marmoreal dream. The comforting blanket whose mission it was to keep my demons at bay failed to protect me from depression. Maybe that's why, at the first heat of March, I got carried away and naively believed that spring had arrived and was here to stay. A bit like a teenager who believes that his first love will also be his last, and that it will stand the test of time.

I wasn't the only one this time to believe in an early change of season. If winter wasn't over, Mother Nature hadn't gotten the memo. In front of my office, a flower had begun to grow. Apart from its earliness, it was nothing special. Yet I couldn't take my eyes off it. As I was saying, it had been a long winter, and looking at it, I felt quietly reborn. While my gaze became a veritable black hole, sucking in all the colors that emanated from this very singular flower, it was my creative spirit that expanded like a shadow when approaching the light. Borrowing the botanical character of this being that had made its way between earth and asphalt, my inspiration grew and grew to such an extent that it was now almost impossible to ignore. What, like any plant species, had begun in a very humble and hidden way, was now cluttering up my mind like a great oak to which I chained myself so that it wouldn't be chopped down.

The next day, much to my dismay, a snowstorm had washed away the source of my inspiration.

However, the idea had gone nowhere. Although it had been buried under an armada of snowflakes, the impression the flower had made on my imagination was still very much present, and it was now my duty to pay it a final tribute. The next steps followed at a furious pace and, quite honestly, I felt as if I were creating in the third person. As if I were standing over my own shoulder. I was witnessing the scene and no longer in total control of my gestures. I painted on the model's body as if it were a canvas. I poured paint over it in a controlled manner until my abstract strokes took on the shapes that had previously taken up residence in my mind. Quietly, I no longer had to close my eyes to see what I wanted to achieve. The idea materialized in front of me and I could see it with my eyes wide open. At last, I had achieved a result that all I had to do was capture and immortalize. The light, the angle, the pose, the model, the painting, my camera. At that moment, I was closer to the conductor than the photographer. I had to coordinate all these instruments and make sure they were all tuned to perfection.

Click.

All that work for a moment that lasts even less time than that onomatopoeia. It's simple: at least three photos are taken while that simple word is spoken. Click. In that brief instant, a precise moment in time is rooted and stretched on the timeline.

The work created will outlive me and become like the memories we create with others. As long as there's someone in the world to appreciate it, it won't die. All because I saw a flower growing in a place and at a time when it shouldn't have. Sometimes it's when we feel we're in the way and not quite in the right place that we can have the greatest impact.