Some days the universe communicates through major events.
An encounter.
A departure.
A phone call that changes everything. It has happened to you too, hasn’t it?
One of those coincidences so precise that you begin to suspect someone, somewhere, with a questionable sense of humor is moving the pieces around.
And then there are days when it sends a ladybug into your kitchen.
Which, let’s be honest, lacks a little spectacle as a cosmic message.
No lightning.
No voice from the heavens.
No bearded old man appearing among the clouds to say:
“My son, I have finally decided to explain what the fuck you are supposed to do with your life.”
No.
A ladybug.
Tiny.
Red.
Landed on something just as red at the exact moment I happened to be there.
And of course, the first thing I thought was not what a wonderful sign from the universe.
It was:
Where the fuck did I put my camera?
Because you can be as spiritual as you like, but when you are a photographer, epiphanies have a technical order of priority.
First you focus.
Then, if there is time, you look for God.
The scene was absurd in its simplicity.
That minute insect, perfectly decorated as though someone had too much free time during the design phase, sat there in the middle of all that red. Red on red. Shades echoing one another, soft shapes, light, contrast.
A composition that would probably have looked artificial if I had tried to build it deliberately.
Instead, it had happened.
All by itself.
This is the kind of thing I love about photography.
Every now and then, reality does a better job than we do.
And without charging a fee.
The problem was persuading Ms. Ladybug to cooperate.
Because insects, unlike professional models, do not sign releases, take direction, or give the slightest fuck about your depth of field.
She was there.
I had to go get my camera.
And suddenly that kitchen had become an action scene.
I probably had not run that fast for something red since certain questionable romantic decisions.
I grab the camera.
I come back.
And she is still there.
A small miracle.
Or simple statistics.
Depending on how much romanticism you had left that morning.
I shoot.
One.
Two.
One more.
And in those few seconds, that ladybug stops being an insect that happened to land on kitchen scraps and becomes something else.
An image.
A memory.
Perhaps even a symbol.
We human beings have this strange need to search for meaning everywhere.
We see the same number three times and think the universe is speaking to us.
We find a feather and begin to suspect angelic intervention.
A song comes on the radio at exactly the right moment and suddenly Spotify becomes a Greek oracle.
We are wonderfully desperate creatures.
We want to believe something is watching us.
That coincidences are not merely coincidences.
That every now and then someone, something, God, fate, karma, the universe, or a particularly bored cosmic employee leaves us a small clue to say:
“Keep going. You haven’t understood a fucking thing, but keep going.”
And maybe that is how it is.
I have no idea.
I have enough trouble understanding human beings, never mind the metaphysical architecture of the universe.
But I like to leave the possibility open.
Traditionally, the ladybug brings good luck.
Or so we say.
She probably knows nothing about it.
She is simply trying to live her minute existence while we have assigned her an entire career in the superstition department.
Poor bastard.
Imagine being a fifth of an inch long and bearing responsibility for humanity’s good fortune.
I would have requested a transfer already.
And yet there was something I liked about that appearance.
Not necessarily because I thought I was about to receive a million-dollar windfall, a mystical revelation, or an emotionally stable woman—we must keep our expectations realistic—but because she had appeared in the right place, at the right time, before the right person to notice.
And this is where photography truly enters the story.
Because perhaps photographing means, above all, this:
noticing.
Not constantly creating something extraordinary.
Noticing that every now and then something extraordinary has had the terrible idea of hiding inside something perfectly ordinary.
A kitchen.
A piece of red material.
An insect.
Three seconds.
The end.
Most people would have walked past.
And not because they are distracted or insensitive.
Simply because life teaches us to look only for big things.
The trip to the other side of the world.
The enormous concert.
The expensive car.
The spectacular person.
The moment worth telling.
The photograph worth posting.
We have turned experience into a never-ending contest of size.
If it is not big enough, beautiful enough, rare enough, shareable enough, it does not seem worthy of attention.
Meanwhile, real life keeps happening in small things.
Quietly.
Without hashtags.
Light entering through a window.
A cat looking at you as if you were incompetent.
A person laughing when they think no one is watching.
A motionless boat.
A sky changing color.
A ladybug that has landed in the most aesthetically appropriate spot in the kitchen.
Little bits of nonsense.
Which, taken together, are practically all of life.
Maybe the problem is that we are forever waiting for the big moment.
The one that will finally put everything right.
The right job.
The right person.
The right journey.
The final answer.
As though somewhere a gigantic neon sign were about to light up:
HERE IT IS, DUMBASS. THIS IS THE MEANING.
But meaning may be far less theatrical.
Maybe it arrives in pieces.
One at a time.
And often while we are busy doing something else entirely.
Photography, for me at least, has always had this ability.
It forces me to slow down enough to notice certain things.
It makes me look.
And truly looking is a discipline we have nearly lost.
We live surrounded by images and observe less and less.
We scroll through hundreds of photographs a day without really seeing any of them.
Faces.
Bodies.
Wars.
Vacations.
Advertisements.
Sunsets.
Tits.
Kittens.
Catastrophes.
One upward flick of a finger and it all disappears.
Next.
Photography, when it works, does exactly the opposite.
It says:
Wait.
Look at this.
Only this.
For a moment.
That ladybug did not change my life.
She did not reveal the future.
She did not deliver the instruction manual for existence.
After photographing her, I probably carried on with the same problems, the same doubts, and the same almost professional ability to complicate things for myself.
But she had stopped me for a few minutes.
And perhaps that is already enough.
She had made me run for a camera.
She had made me smile.
She had made me think:
Well, look at that fucking thing.
Which is a much more important sentence than it sounds.
Because wonder does not have to be elegant.
It can be this too.
A small, affectionate obscenity spoken before beauty.
Perhaps that is one reason I continue to love photography.
Despite everything that inevitably comes afterward when a passion also becomes a profession.
Clients.
Deadlines.
Files.
Hard drives.
Selections.
The market.
Sales.
Algorithms.
That marvelous process by which human beings manage to take practically anything beautiful and add an invoice.
And then moments like this still happen.
No client.
No commission.
No project.
No strategy.
Only something I see and that old, immediate feeling:
I have to photograph this.
And there it is, the original reason.
The one that came before the work.
Before technique.
Before someone decided whether a photograph was commercially interesting or not.
Curiosity.
Pleasure.
That almost childlike urge to take something you have seen and preserve it.
Maybe that ladybug really was a sign.
Not necessarily a sign of good luck.
Maybe simply a reminder.
That the world does not always have to blow something up to surprise us.
That sometimes beauty arrives without an appointment.
Lands in front of you.
Stays for a few seconds.
And then leaves.
It is up to you to notice.
It is up to you to run and get the camera.
And above all, it is up to you not to be so fucking busy searching for the meaning of life that you miss those small things which, taken together, may be the meaning of life itself.