Our galaxy is called the Milky Way in English, a name that evokes a symbolic image shared across many languages. This imagery traces back to a Greek myth in which Zeus placed his mortal-born son, Heracles, at the breast of the goddess Hera while she slept, hoping the child would nurse and become immortal. When Hera awoke to find an unknown baby feeding from her, she pushed him away, and drops of milk spilled across the sky, forming the Milky Way.
In Finnish, however, our galaxy is called Linnunrata—the “path of the birds.” Birds also appear in the origin stories of the Finno-Ugric languages. One such myth tells of our world being born from the breaking of an egg laid by a waterfowl on an island in the primordial sea. From what was held within that egg, our world took shape.
And then I wonder: How many birds are we made of?
TECHNICAL NOTES: All the photos were taken in Berlin in May 2025 with a Ricoh GR III. The bird-like hands belong to my eldest son; the boy with skin like eggshells is my youngest. I enjoy including my children in my photographic projects. For this one, we immersed ourselves in myths about our universe, speaking at length about the influence of Greco-Roman mythology on Western thought, and about how, despite being so well known, these are far from the only stories. There are countless ways to tell a story — whether about the world, or about the things of the world — through words or through images.
"I'm talking to you about a country that doesn't exist..."
A Land, both diary and road book, exploration notebook and photo album.
A Land, a poetic journey, a journey of images, a journey in the images, a journey in the assembly of the images themselves.
Where the intimate rubs shoulders with the real, the very near rubs shoulders with the distant, the known mingles with the unknown.
A Land, a series that relates my search for an acceptable place, a place to live, a place that I would recognize as mine. From a fantasy country, from an ideal place, from my ideal place.
A set of micro-fictions, pieces of scattered puzzles to reconstitute a geographical map and a great story that mixes intimacy, ethnography, architecture as well as sociology.
A Land, a cinematic variation of photography like fragments of a life reimagined from the window of a moving train. The images intersect and signal to each other, we go from the second-hand shop to the laboratory of the archaeologist, from the exploration of the real to that of the imaginary, and from the past to the future.
As I walked, as I wandered here and there, I would be happy that the reader-visitor also walks in this series as in his personal cartography where his memories and his experiences would find an echo there.
TECHNICAL NOTES: My approach and my artistic work are sensitively on the side of the intimate, of the human link with nature and its environment, of reality and fiction intertwined, and of the dialogue between images in the form of visual collages.
I also allow myself to change cameras according to my desire of the moment, be it film or digital, Holga, Horizon 202, Mamiya C330, Lubitel, Canon EOS 60D, Minox 35 GT, Polaroid SX-70, Pinhole camera, Lomo LC-A.
Rather than privileging the individual image, I am very interested in playing with images. Through diptychs and triptychs, I seek an escape to a reinterpreted territory, a suspended time, a space where your memories and experiences would find an echo. My approach to the places and people I photograph is instinctive.
I let myself be carried away, I try in any case to achieve this state of mind and openness of gaze towards the other. To allow myself to wander here and there, to let myself be carried away by the wind, the ardor, by an indefinable sensation, a hazardous impression or even a revelation.
And my images are often steeped in melancholy, loneliness, and feelings of restlessness and loss.
For me, photography is the synthesis between the representation of reality and the ability to transcend it. It's going back again and again to the same places like a sort of detective and looking for proof, evidence of one's own involvement in this great fresco that is existence.
Through Their Eyes is a visual meditation on identity, resilience, and the layered complexity of tradition. This selection of photographs, taken in Vietnam, invites viewers into moments that are often unseen, yet profoundly human.
Each image offers an intimate glimpse into lives shaped by cultural heritage, societal expectation, and the quiet search for belonging. My intention was never to capture perfection, but presence, the unspoken emotions, the strength in stillness, and the stories carried in a single gaze.
Time is one of the most enthralling subjects that captivates me. My experience of it is neither fixed nor linear, though reason insists on measuring it as such.
There are days that unfold like months, and years that vanish in the span of an hour; seconds that bleed into endless minutes; present, past and future locked in a ceaseless dance of becoming. Time is circular. I say this not with scientific intent, nor to assert any scholarly claim, but simply because it reveals itself to me in that form.
There are moments when I feel myself a child once more, memories returning in waves; others when I glimpse a future not yet lived, pulling me forward with quiet urgency. At times I feel older than the world itself; at others, I observe my surroundings as though I had already stepped beyond them. I know not everyone senses time in this way. And yet, linear time is merely a framework — a construct we use to navigate the fragile path between our alpha and our omega.
The four images I have chosen for this modest essay are a meditation on time: the relentless time that lays itself upon our being; the time of blossoming and creation; the time of rupture and revolt; and the time of return — to reflection, to solitude, to the origin.
Within this timeline, self-representation becomes the thread of a living performance — one shaped by spatial light and by the eternal quest to balance shadow and radiance in our daily existence. Through symbolic and poetic gestures, I attempt to rewrite my own inner knowing, inscribing it upon a timeline and a space that are mine alone — both deeply personal and achingly intimate.
Leiria, June 2025, Carla de Sousa
© 2025 Carla de Sousa
TECHNICAL NOTES: All images are staged and photographed digitally, using available light or minimal LED lighting. The scenes are built inside each protagonist’s real domestic space. I direct the atmosphere, framing, and gestures with precision, and post-production plays a key role in sculpting mood, tone, and color to match the emotional intent of each moment.
The Offline series began as an observation of solitude within familiar spaces—where people leave behind their public selves and exist alone with their thoughts. In a world that demands constant connectivity, these women find themselves in a different kind of disconnection—one that removes them from external perception, social expectations, and perhaps even from themselves.
They are portrayed in their homes, caught in moments that might otherwise go unnoticed: a pause between movements, a late-night cigarette, a gaze lost in the window. Fleeting, mundane, almost indifferent moments. Yet, these moments carry a quiet weight. Each figure seems to linger between here and elsewhere, engaged in a dialogue with something unspoken.
The series stands in contrast to the curated aesthetics of social media, where both personal space and self-image are carefully constructed for external perception. Here, the home is not a backdrop for self-presentation but a site of internal exposure. The women exist exactly as they are in that moment—unpolished, unposed, unfiltered. Their clothing is incidental, their expressions unguarded, their presence untouched by the need to impress or perform. Photography here does not capture an idealized moment but lingers on what remains unsaid: a quiet refusal of spectacle, a confrontation with solitude, a space where disconnection becomes its own presence.
Rather than impose a narrative, the work invites the viewer into a space of quiet tension—where stillness is not emptiness but something unresolved, a pause that extends beyond the frame.