Why I became a photographer

My maman, Margit Levy, was a photographer.

A wonderful one.

She was French, full of life, full of love, and had that incredible ability to make people feel at ease in front of her camera.

She photographed people on film sets in France in the 1950s and 60s, captured street life in Paris, and took the most beautiful portraits.

She always managed to help people relax in front of her camera, often with the help of champagne, and the results were always spectacular.

Very French.

Very her.

Looking back at her work now, what I notice most isn’t just how stylish or striking the images are.

It’s how alive people look in them.

Relaxed.

Present.

Completely themselves.

Bien dans sa peau.

That lovely French expression is hard to translate exactly, but it means feeling good in your own skin. Comfortable with yourself. At ease with who you are.

And when I look at her photographs, that’s what I see.

I don’t think I fully understood it at the time, but I grew up around photography that wasn’t just about how someone looked.

It was about how they felt.

Maman gave me my first proper camera when I was 18, and I’ve been taking photographs ever since.

But strangely, I never imagined I would become a photographer professionally.

For a long time, my life looked very different.

I worked in human rights with the United Nations. I lived in different countries. I worked in places and situations that shaped me deeply.

And then, after moving back to England, seemingly out of nowhere, I decided to become a photographer.

At least, it felt out of nowhere at the time.

Now, I’m not so sure.

The more I reflect on what I do now, the more I realise how much of it goes back to her.

Not just the photography itself.

But the way she made people feel.

The way she brought something out in them.

The way she helped them relax.

The way her photographs seemed to capture more than a face.

There was something very natural in the way she saw people.

And I think, in my own way, I’ve inherited a little of that.

My work now is different from hers, of course.

Different time.

Different country.

Different cameras.

Different women in front of the lens.

But the heart of it feels connected.

Because what I care about most isn’t simply taking a good photograph.

It’s helping a woman feel comfortable enough to be seen.

Not posed into someone she isn’t.

Not polished until she disappears.

Not made to perform confidence.

Just gently guided back to herself.

That moment when she sees a photograph and thinks:

“yes — that’s me.”

That is the part I love.

And perhaps that’s why this work has always felt like more than a job to me.

It feels personal.

It feels like something I was always going to find my way to, even if I didn’t know it at the time.

I like to think my maman is somewhere over my shoulder when I’m behind the camera.

And I'd like to think she'd be proud of what I do now.

Not just the photographs themselves, but the way I try to make women feel in front of the camera.

Relaxed.

Comfortable.

A little more bien dans sa peau.

Maybe becoming a photographer wasn’t as “out of the blue” as I once thought.

Maybe it was always there.

Merci Maman. Je t'aime.