I developed my love for photography long before I understood what a camera was. My father is an amateur photographer, and as a child, I spent every holiday traveling with him from city to city. Wherever we went, he was always holding a camera. At that time, I didn’t know why he carried something that looked like a gun barrel and pointed it at the world. I only knew that he never stopped observing—light, angles, distance—and that he always checked carefully.

When he photographed me, I would stand nearby and quietly imitate his posture, close my right eyes, and holding my hands as if I were also taking a picture. I didn’t yet understand what he was capturing, but I was already learning how to look. It wasn’t until high school that I began to notice scenery differently—to imagine how a moment could be framed, composed, and made more complete through a lens. Soon after, my father gave me my first camera. For the first time, those childhood gestures became real.

The image here layers a younger version of myself—pretending to take photographs—over who I am now. It feels as though my past is still watching, still learning, still photographing the present. People often say it’s more important to experience a place with your heart than to record it with a camera. But to me, photography is not about collecting images. It is about preserving memory—about holding onto the moments that shaped the way I see the world.