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 lit up 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 hit a crisis: I realized I had never fully enjoyed academic life, and I struggled to accept that I’d spent a third of my life doing something I didn’t want. I kept going because 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. That was my first contact with images.

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

I learned to take photos, to edit through tutorials, and started working as a photographer. My technical skill grew as I shot fashion, architecture, products, a thousand other things. I loved the radical swings this profession brought. Some mornings I worked on film sets, photographing actors in a fog-filled basement, and by afternoon I was shooting Montevideo from a rooftop. At the same time, I felt like I was jumping from job to job 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 came my way without choosing it.

From the outside I probably 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 at something I love, pushed me into a deep state of insecurity. To cope, I tried to meditate daily, sometimes with the secret hope of erasing my thoughts instead of observing them. I also read, went to therapy, looked for every resource I could find to change my state. I loved turning other people’s ideas into images, but 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, especially walking among the trees of the Lussich Arboretum. Captivated by sunlight filtering through the leaves, or the sound of leaves under my feet as I lost myself in the forest, I began to find a center, an inner point of balance I’d long searched for and never found. The Forest Bathing project let me pause, reflect. That intimate connection with nature marked the start of a new attunement. My perception and the way I looked at things kept changing with every walk in the forest, waking my curiosity. And that drift never stopped. It spread into other disciplines, above all into the exploration of consciousness.

I recently graduated as a teacher of the Alexander Technique, a practice that has connected me deeply with my body and its movement, letting me explore honestly the delicacy of every gesture, every breath, joining my inner world with the space I inhabit. Little by little, the technique showed me I could let go of beliefs and defenses that made up a protective bubble I no longer needed. I could switch off the autopilot and start making conscious choices. I could embrace an uncertain future and feel at home there. Thanks to this and other practices, doing less, I found myself more. And all of it changed my way of seeing and of photographing too.

Today I still work in commercial photography and personal projects. I also teach the Alexander Technique and accompany 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 (Laboratory of Looking), with my friend Lucia Bruce, inviting participants to explore their way of being in the world through the act of looking.

These blog posts, which are really my newsletter, come from the desire to amplify my thinking about what’s possible, to share ideas, tools and explorations that have completely changed me, expanding my world. I don’t know exactly 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.

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