Welcome, lightning bolt

I started my professional life in science. It wasn’t my passion; I chose it mostly because it came easily to me and because, back then, my curiosity wasn’t switched on and nothing really captivated me. At twenty-six — already a computer engineer with a master’s in biomedical engineering — I was in a PhD program at a university in Chicago. At some point I fell into a crisis, realising I had never fully enjoyed the academic world, and struggling to accept that I had spent a third of my life doing something I didn’t want to do. I kept going because I knew it meant job security, and because living among zeros and ones, always chasing clear, concrete results, gave me an illusion of calm, of control. I worked with MRI, looking at people from the inside — and that was my first contact with images.

Photography arrived in my life like a lightning bolt and, although art had never interested me before, I began to dream about making photos for a living. I was still giving more weight to security than to happiness. But suddenly, leaping into the unknown felt more tempting than staying settled in certainties just to feel safe. I had accumulated years of boredom, studying without enthusiasm, and I felt I had no motivation to start something from scratch. And yet — I did it!

I learned to take photos and to edit through tutorials, and I started working as a photographer. My technical skills evolved while I photographed fashion, architecture, products and a thousand other things. I found the radical changes this profession brought fascinating. There were days when I worked in film in the morning, photographing actors in a fog-filled basement, and in the afternoon I was shooting Montevideo from a rooftop. At the same time, I felt I was jumping from one job to the next without ever connecting deeply with anything or anyone. In the end I was a branch dragged along by the river — no resistance, no questions — reacting to whatever proposals came my way without choosing them.

From the outside I may have looked independent and serene, but the truth is I lived confused, full of fears, frightened by the intensity of my own emotions. Working without pause, even doing something I love, led me into a deep state of insecurity. To cope with it I tried to meditate daily, sometimes with the secret wish of eradicating my thoughts rather than observing them. I also read, went to therapy, and looked for every kind of resource to change my state. Although I loved turning other people’s ideas into images, over time I understood I needed to express something of my own. That’s how a personal project began, born from the desire to capture the beauty of nature in images.

The immensity of the landscape calmed me, above all when walking among the trees of the Lussich Arboretum. Captivated by sunlight filtering through the foliage, or the sound of leaves under my feet as I lost myself in the forest, I began to discover a centre — an inner point of balance I had long searched for but never found. The Forest Bathing project allowed me to pause, to reflect. That intimate connection with nature marked the beginning of a new attunement. My perception and my way of looking changed with every immersion in the forest, awakening my curiosity. And that drift never stopped; in fact it expanded into other disciplines connected, above all, with the exploration of consciousness.

I recently graduated as a teacher of the Alexander Technique, a practice that has deeply connected me with my body and its movement, allowing me to explore with honesty the delicacy of every gesture, every breath, joining my inner world with the space I inhabit. Little by little, the technique revealed to me that I could let go of beliefs and defences that formed a protective bubble I no longer needed. I could switch off the autopilot and start making conscious decisions. It was possible to embrace an uncertain future and be comfortable there. Thanks to this practice and others: by doing less, I found myself more and more. And all of this also profoundly changed my way of looking and of photographing.

Today I continue to work in commercial photography and personal projects; I also teach the Alexander Technique and accompany the processes of people who want to expand their experience of life. Combining photography and the Alexander Technique, I ventured into a project called Laboratorio de la Mirada (together with my friend Lucia Bruce), which invited participants to explore their way of being in the world through the act of looking.

These blog entries — which are really my newsletter — spring from the desire to amplify my thoughts about what is possible, to share ideas, tools and explorations that have completely transformed me and expanded my world. I don’t quite know which world I mean, or where I’m going, but I’m deeply curious to find out.

I invite you to join me in the process.

If you haven’t yet, you can subscribe to my newsletter (in Spanish) here.