Breathing
No matter how much I enjoy the satisfaction waiting at the end of the road, the first few steps always send a chill through me. No matter how much I dread starting from scratch, it happens – again and again.
As a teenager, I had the curious realisation that I was wasting my time at school, so I launched into adult life rather early and abruptly. It wasn’t easy at the beginning, but with time it became more manageable.
Several years later, I started over again – this time as a newcomer in a foreign country. A bit of a rough experience, I’d say – one that teaches you a lot about yourself and the people around you. Quite the university. Each time, there were ups and downs. Breaths in, breaths out. Sometimes fuelled by adrenaline, more often with a knot in my stomach.
The good part is that the cramp eventually eases, and the stomach expands. The bad part is – it expands onto your thighs. That’s when you know: it’s time to start again.
These experiences led me to create Germinal, which reflects on those moments of tension, expectation, and wishful thinking. The series consists of 12 photographs that evoke the sensation of breathing. It’s about gaining hope, losing grip, failing, hoping again, emerging, embracing, failing, breathing.
There is always the fear of failure – and the hope of overcoming.
A breath spans the space between the two.
Lyne 2025
