For years, photography seemed to move faster than the shutter itself. Algorithms demanded constant updates, clients expected instant delivery, and the world mistook volume for vision. I followed that rhythm for a time – until I realized the rhythm was not mine.
I began to ask: What if slowness is not a weakness, but a rebellion? What if art only appears when it truly belongs?
That is how I came to rebuild my practice around three words: Unrushed. Uncompromised. Unapologetic.
The Tyranny of Speed
The digital age treats photography as disposable. Scroll, double-tap, forget. In such a cycle, images rarely breathe; they barely live before they are buried.
I watched colleagues exhaust themselves trying to keep up. They produced for likes and adapted to trends. They bent their vision to fit the feed. I did it too, at times. But each compromise left me further from what I believe photography can be: a fragment of truth, distilled, unrushed.
Speed creates surface. Slowness creates depth.
Refusing the Commissioned Pace
At some point, I made a choice that many considered unwise: to step away from commissions as a regular practice. To work not for deadlines, but for meaning.
This refusal was not about arrogance; it was about freedom. When you are not beholden to someone else’s brief, you can let the image arrive on its own terms. You can wait. You can listen. You can allow contradiction, imperfection, silence.
My work became less “marketable”, perhaps – but infinitely more mine.
A Fragment, Unrushed
I no longer see photography as a production line. For me, it is more like archaeology. You do not force the earth to reveal what it hides; you brush gently until the fragment emerges.
Each image is a fragment, of intimacy, of surreal vision, of humanity’s elegance and darkness. Not every day yields one. Sometimes weeks pass with nothing. But when an image does appear, it carries the weight of that silence.
Unrushed, it holds.
Reality Bends, but the Vision Stays True
I have always been drawn to the surreal, to the tension between what is seen and what is felt. Photography bends reality – shadows stretch, flesh becomes sculpture, silence becomes narrative.
But in that bending, the vision must remain true. That is the paradox I live by: distortion that clarifies, unreality that reveals essence.
This truth does not need approval. It does not need to please. It only needs to exist.
A New Beginning
Stepping away from the fast lane was not the end of my career. It was a renewal.
Now, my work finds life in exhibitions, in publications, in long-term series that evolve at their own pace. I no longer measure success by likes or deadlines. Instead I measure it by whether the image resonates, whether it lingers in silence after the viewer turns away.
Photography, for me, is resistance. Resistance to speed. Resistance to conformity.
Unrushed. Uncompromised. Unapologetic.
This is my manifesto, and my beginning.
If this reflection resonates, I invite you to move beyond the words and into the work itself.
The images live here – fragments unrushed, uncompromised, unapologetic – waiting quietly to be discovered.
Wilson Santos 