Decagon Gallery
photo: David Swainson
p 3/3
Monday Flash
a photo that changed you
Dear Robyn,
When taking this photograph, you were having a hard time, albeit you still are. This photograph was taken during a week of extreme turmoil, and honestly, you might not have taken it if it weren’t for a deadline. You didn’t even like it that much at first, but during a class photo critique, everyone kept pointing it out. You know that they didn’t know what you were going through, but in the moment, it felt as if they could feel your pain and your grief, and that it gave them a unique experience. It made you feel understood, and now you wonder if this photo would even exist if it weren’t for your pain.
Robyn Williams
Atlanta, GA
Curator's Note: This photograph is quiet, restrained, and unexpectedly vulnerable. The hands hover rather than rest—poised, tentative, suspended in a shallow space that feels neither fully private nor fully exposed. The framing isolates gesture from identity, allowing emotion to surface without explanation. There is no overt signal of distress, yet tension lives in the spacing, the slight curl of the fingers, the refusal of contact. What gives the image its force is not intention but circumstance. Made during a period of turmoil, almost reluctantly, the photograph carries what the photographer could not articulate at the time. The class critique becomes a moment of recognition: others see something real before the maker is ready to name it. This work suggests that pain does not always announce itself dramatically. Sometimes it appears as restraint, as hesitation, as a body holding itself together. The photograph exists not because of suffering, but because the artist stayed present long enough for it to surface—and be felt by others.
Remember:
You came here, to the cold, the desolate and dry, to a land of gleaming skies to embrace something new, even while leaving behind what you knew, the comfort of a community that honored you. Perhaps that is what you most miss. But here, there you were, alone, alone with the changing light that exposed a beauty you had not experienced before. Otherworldly, as you felt yourself this first winter, friendless but fulfilled with family in a way never before experienced. You knew the grandchildren awaited you, those small smiles, your adult son’s open arms and heart, your wife’s joy. Remember how alone and then how full you became.
Jonah Bornstein
Denver, CO
Curator's Note: The photograph holds solitude without bitterness. Bare trees rise against a dim, unsettled sky, their branches etched sharply into the fading light. The landscape feels exposed and spare, yet quietly attentive. Nothing here comforts at first glance, but nothing repels. The scene asks for patience. The accompanying text frames this image as a record of transition—of leaving one life and standing briefly unmoored in another. The isolation is real, but so is the widening sense of presence. Light becomes the bridge: unfamiliar, otherworldly, and slowly revealing a beauty that only appears when one stays. This work understands solitude not as emptiness, but as a necessary interval—one that makes room for belonging to return in a different form.
Phoenix.
For a long time, I couldn’t approach this image without internal resistance, because there was too much truth about the moment, from which it was impossible to return to the previous configuration of myself. When I look at this photo now, I realize that it’s about agreeing to stop holding yourself in a state of constant readiness to stand up. At that moment, there was no longer any fear, expectation, or desire to explain what was happening inside me. There was a strange feeling of bodily transparency, as if everything I had been through no longer had a shape.
This frame became the entry point to the change, because here, for the first time, I allowed myself not to rise back up in the same way. I no longer assembled myself into familiar structures and did not try to look stable where stability no longer made sense. I realized that change doesn’t always feel like movement.
Ekaterina Pavlova
Omsk, Russia
Curator's Note: This photograph marks a moment of surrender rather than ascent. The figure appears suspended—arms open, body dissolving into light and shadow. The image resists solidity. Forms blur, edges soften, and the body seems to unfasten itself from gravity, from certainty, from definition. What reads at first as collapse slowly reveals itself as release. The accompanying text clarifies that this is not an image about rising, but about allowing what no longer fits to fall away. Stability is not reclaimed here; it is relinquished. The photograph becomes a threshold—where change arrives not through motion, but through the quiet decision to stop holding oneself together.
Letter to this former version of myself
Dear Laurent,
I see you there, standing in the Emperor’s gardens in Tokyo, surrounded by that winter silence only Japanese gardens can create. You don’t know it yet, but this stormy sky, that special light, the perfectly sculpted trees, the suspended clouds, and those extraordinary koi fish… all of this is about to change your life.
When you look at the screen of your camera and discover the image of the koi, you feel something — a shiver, a certainty. Listen to it. You’ve just captured a unique moment, one that only happens once.
This photograph, you don’t know it yet, will win the first prize at the Arles Festival for the 50th anniversary edition in 2019. Yes, you. Yes, that image. And this prize will be so much more than a trophy: it will be a sign. A sign that you can jump in, fully and fearlessly, into your life as an artist.
So I want to tell you sincerely: bravo. Bravo for your eye, your patience, your sensitivity. What you are experiencing right now will be part of the turning point that allows me today — that allows you today — to live your artistic life with joy, pleasure, and pride.
Keep believing in what you see. Keep looking at the world the way you do in this moment.
With tenderness,
Laurent Barrera, a few years ahead
Laurent Barrera
Toulon, France
Curator's Note: This photograph holds tension and grace in the same frame. A dark reflection of bare branches spreads across the water, while two koi glide beneath—one luminous, one subdued. The composition is precise yet effortless: shadow above, movement below, stillness surrounding both. What makes the image decisive is contrast. The tree feels stark, almost severe; the fish move with quiet confidence. Life and reflection coexist without conflict. The photograph marks a moment of recognition. Not because it would later win a prize, but because the eye trusted what it saw. The award confirmed it. The seeing created it.
Dear LIGHTCAMACT,
I remember that moment clearly. I was sitting still, doing nothing, yet feeling completely exhausted. The room felt heavy—quiet, except for the faint sound of traffic outside, as if the world was moving forward without me. I honestly thought this might be the end. That maybe photography wasn’t meant for me. That maybe I had reached my limit.
Then I picked up the camera. It felt familiar in my hands—cold metal, steady weight. Something I had held so many times before, yet this time it felt different. When I pressed the shutter, nothing dramatic happened. No miracle. Just a quiet shift inside me—soft, almost unnoticeable, but real.
When I looked at this image, I didn’t just see a net. I saw myself. Caught in habits. Stuck in the same thoughts, looping again and again. Telling myself limits that were never truly mine. In that frame, I understood something important.
The cage wasn’t my skill. It wasn’t my camera. It wasn’t my circumstances. It was my mindset.
The camera didn’t save me. It didn’t give me answers. What saved me was learning to see again. So I made a quiet decision. Not a dramatic promise—just an honest one.
With love,
me
13/01/2026
Lucky
Haryana, India
Curator's Note: This photograph is stark and unadorned. A net hangs suspended against black space—delicate, repetitive, enclosing nothing and everything at once. The structure feels like a cage, yet it is porous. Every boundary is made of thin threads. The power of the image lies in metaphor without excess. The pattern suggests entrapment, but also transparency. What appears confining is, in fact, permeable. This frame marks a moment of recognition: the limits were not external. The net is self-woven, and therefore, not permanent.
Dear me,
That day on August 30, 2025 by the water, I felt a bit lost. I was just holding my phone and looking around. Then I noticed it — the sandals, the soft light, the quiet little reflection — so simple but it felt completely right. In that moment I realized what I had been searching for all along. To see, to feel, to capture those small honest moments that somehow say everything. That was the beginning of my journey as a photographer, the start of something I had been quietly dreaming about without even knowing it.
With love,
Yasaman
November 6, 2025
Yasaman Hafezi
Tehran, Iran
Curator's Note: This photograph is built from stillness. Two sandals rest at the edge of tiled water, while reflections ripple above them. Nothing dramatic occurs. The scene is ordinary, almost overlooked. Yet the composition holds a quiet balance—grid, shadow, light, absence. The power of the image lies in attention. The photographer did not stage a moment; she recognized one. The empty sandals imply presence without showing it. The water softens the rigid lines below. This frame marks a shift from searching outward to noticing inward. It suggests that photography begins not with spectacle, but with the decision to honor what is already there.
Dear Roma,
You remember that moment when, after all the doubts and inner struggles, after photography had already broken into your life so deeply and irreversibly, everything suddenly shifted. She said: “Roma, there is no tragedy in your photographs. In all of them — there is love.” In that moment, I realized that the reason I look at the world through love is because vulnerability always carries beauty, and strength lives in sensitivity.
This image is not about drama. It is about sincerity. About allowing yourself to feel deeply and to see honestly.
Remember that you have always moved forward not by force, but by trust. Not by proving, but by listening. You never chased attention — you created presence. This photograph became another quiet confirmation that what you see matters. That your way of seeing is not weakness, but a language. A language of care, patience, and truth.
Keep trusting your gaze. Keep choosing love — even when it feels fragile.
With faith in you,
Roma
Roman Hrytsyna
Kyiv, Ukraine
Curator's Note: This image pairs disruption with tenderness. A man wades through floodwater, carrying what he values, while behind him the word *love* is painted plainly on a worn wall. The scene could read as crisis, yet the frame resists spectacle. The gesture is practical, focused, almost quiet. The strength of the photograph lies in contrast: rising water, steady movement; damaged surface, simple message. Nothing is exaggerated. Care is the center. The image suggests that even in instability, what guides the eye—and the body—is not tragedy, but attention. Love here is not sentiment. It is action.
Dear Shea,
This letter marks the moment you finally chose yourself — not quietly, not halfway, but fully. This self-portrait was the first time you allowed your body to exist without apology, without negotiation, without asking permission from fear, tradition, or expectation.
At the time, it felt risky. You were afraid of what this choice might cost you — who you might lose, what doors might close. But this image holds a deeper truth: choosing yourself did not isolate you. It made room. Room for people who see you clearly. Room for tenderness instead of shame.
This photograph is not an act of rebellion. It is an act of care. A declaration that your body is not a problem to be solved, but a presence to be honored.
Remember this moment whenever doubt returns. Remember that self-respect is not selfish, and visibility is not a threat. You were never wrong for wanting to exist freely.
Please keep choosing yourself — gently, persistently.
And please, never turn that choice into self-hatred.
With respect and belief in you,
Shea
Shea Vyās
Bhopal, India
Curator's Note: This self-portrait is restrained, not defiant. The figure stands in shadow, body partially illuminated by a cool band of light. The pose is closed yet steady—arms crossed lightly, gaze turned inward. Nothing here performs exposure. The vulnerability is quiet and deliberate. The surrounding wall absorbs most of the frame, amplifying solitude without dramatizing it. The body is neither idealized nor concealed. It simply occupies space. What makes the image powerful is its refusal to argue. It does not demand acceptance; it enacts it. This is not rebellion—it is alignment. A moment where presence replaces apology.
Curator's Note: This photograph marks a turning point disguised as light. A figure bends forward, fragmented by a grid of luminous squares. The pattern dominates at first—architecture projected onto flesh—yet the human presence refuses to disappear. Body and structure collide, neither fully winning. What matters is tension. The image still carries the photographer’s early fascination with form, repetition, and geometry. But here, unlike the earlier abstractions, the human figure is not an intrusion. It is central. Vulnerable. Necessary. The award validated the photograph, but its deeper significance lies in what it unlocked: the shift from structure alone to story within structure. This frame holds both worlds at once—the architect and the emerging street photographer—balanced in a single decisive moment.
Hezy Holzman
Ramat Gan, Israel
A Letter to the Photographer I Once Was
You began photographing at a young age, at a time when learning photography meant teaching yourself everything alone. There were no teachers, no mentors, and no internet yet — and in a small country with a unique language, there were almost no artistic photography books. Only technical manuals. You spent hours wandering through second hand bookstores hoping to find something, and usually found nothing. You had no real way of knowing what was happening in the photographic world abroad. Everything you created came from within, guided only by instinct.
Your work was almost entirely abstract architectural fragments, facades, lines, clean formal compositions. Whenever a human figure entered the frame, it felt like an intrusion. You didn’t yet understand how closely these choices were connected to the profession you were studying: architecture.
A few years later, someone would tell you about Nikon’s international photography competition. You would assume it was far above your level — tens of thousands of submissions from around the world, many by excellent and even famous photographers. Only about 150 were selected. Despite that, you would send in several photographs.
And to your surprise, one of them — the attached one, titled Miska Takes Care of Shiri — would be chosen.
It would appear in Nikon’s prestigious catalog, and that recognition would give your photographic life a significant boost. But the real change wouldn’t come from the award itself. It would come afterward. Following the award, you would discover that a friend owned fifteen years’ worth of Nikon’s previous competition catalogs. You would borrow them one by one, studying them in depth. You would try to understand why the judges chose this image — and that one — out of tens of thousands.
This long period of learning would gradually — and then quite dramatically — transform your approach to photography. You would realize that the abstract style you had been using was limited, and even too easy for you. You would begin photographing people, gestures, emotions, stories. You would learn to wait for the right moment, the right expression, the delicate balance of a decisive moment. Without knowing the term yet, you would become a street photographer.
Years later, your photographs would continue to be selected for competitions, including prestigious ones, and you would understand that without this photograph — the attached one — you might have remained in the world of abstraction, missing the depth and joy that street photography would later bring into your life.
Without that first award, I suspect I wouldn’t be where I am today — both in the pleasure photography gives me and in the abilities that have developed since.
With gratitude,
Hezy
Curator's Note: This photograph lives in the space between intention and contact. Two hands reach across a muted sky—one steady, one tentative. They do not touch, yet the tension between them carries more weight than contact would. The pause feels deliberate, almost sacred. The surrounding frame—blurred grass, drifting particles, heavy clouds—creates resistance without threat. Nothing is resolved. Nothing is claimed. The image rests in readiness. What gives the work its strength is restraint. The hands remain open. The gesture is allowed to exist without outcome. This is not about loss or fulfillment, but about permitting oneself to reach—and not withdrawing.
Anatolii Semko
Videbæk, Denmark
Remember this feeling. You didn’t know what would come next, but you had already allowed yourself to reach. One of your hands wanted. The other was a little afraid. But both were reaching toward each other, as if believing for the first time that this was allowed. Between them, there was a pause. Not empty — warm. Filled with memories of touches that left a mark and of those that never happened but taught you how to be gentle.
The sky felt heavy, but it wasn’t frightening. It simply held what you had been carrying inside for so long. The grass slightly blocked your view, like getting tangled when you tried to take a step forward.
But you were open. You didn’t close your hands. And at that moment, that was enough. This isn’t about pain. It’s about the moment you quietly allowed yourself to be ready.
Jan Mohammad Shaikh
Howrah, India
1991 then I was 31 years old. I started my job in an advertising agency, and my hobby was photography. I dreamed about a shot. One day, with the help of my neighbor, I managed the dream shot. That amazing picture gave me a break.
Now I am 65. It is the last spell of my life and honestly I say this: photography gave me the worldwide recognition and immense pleasure.
Still I am dreaming about photography all the time.
Thanks,
SK Jan Mohammad
13-01-2026
Curator's Note: This photograph is built on interruption. A woven barrier divides the frame, yet life insists on passing through it—child, calf, dog—each emerging at a different height, in a different gesture. The boy’s direct gaze anchors the image, while the animals seem caught mid-transition, half-contained, half-free. There is tension here, but also play. The wall is both obstacle and stage for an accidental alignment of bodies negotiating space. The power of the image lies in its structure: separation without full division, constraint without stillness. It captures a world where boundaries are porous, and presence pushes through anyway.
Tata Tchanturia
Tbilisi, Georgia
I’m glad you took this photo, Tata.
It will always remind you of the road you and your body have traveled — all the way to the moment when you learned to look at it with gratitude, to accept it as it is, and to love it.
You remember how difficult that road was. How you argued with your body, resisted it, blamed it — first as a little girl shaped by the beauty standards of the 1990s, later as a young woman for whom the mirror brought more sadness than peace. It always felt like something didn’t match the imagined “ideal.”
Then you learned how to hide — your shapes, your curves. You found a style that kept both others and yourself from looking too closely.
But one day, you tried something different. You let the camera come close to your body and chose not to correct it, but simply to see it. Not to change it — but to accept it.
This photo comes from the moment when you stopped fighting your body. When you looked at it calmly and understood: this is your home — the only one you have, unique, fragile, and worthy of care.
Now you know what matters:
learning to accept and embrace
your body is one of the most
important gifts you can give yourself.
And still —
I’m so glad you took this photo, Tata. 💙
Curator's Note: The photograph stays close to the body, without trying to correct or idealize it. The light traces what is usually hidden, allowing texture, softness, and imperfection to remain visible and unprotected. There is no confrontation here, only presence. The image feels like a pause after a long internal resistance — a moment when looking becomes possible without judgment. This work holds a quiet shift from struggle to acceptance. Not as a conclusion, but as a beginning: the first time the body is seen not as something to be fixed, but as something to be lived in.
Dear photographers,
Not everyone dares to return to the moment that changed them. You did.
I believe the most important thing in life is to leave something behind —
to let something live after you.
Through your photographs and your words, you created a shared space — one where stories exist on their own, quiet and honest, and continue to move through the inner worlds of those who encounter them.
Because perhaps the hardest thing we ever have to do is to be fully honest — first of all, with ourselves — in the moments that matter most.
Decagon Gallery team thanks each of you for the bravery to be real and for the quiet magic you shared.
Teona Machavariani
Curator of Artistic Programs
Initiator of Monday Flash
Decagon Gallery
copyright 2026 Decagon Gallery
photo: Hèctor Abela Arbués