Margaux de Roos

Margaux moves between Brussels and Crete with one camera and a notebook that travels in a linen pouch. She has photographed for several wellness publications and now writes more than she shoots. Her essays for Aya are about presence — the photographer's particular kind, where you wait for the image to arrive. Years of assignment work taught her the difference between taking a picture and receiving one: the first is fast and usually forgettable, the second requires standing still long past the comfortable moment. She writes about that discipline as a life practice, because it is one — the wait before the shutter and the wait before speaking are, in her experience, the same wait. Her essays move between the two islands of her year: winter pieces from Brussels about practicing in low light, summer pieces from Crete about the honesty of harsh noon. She came to the AYA Method the way she comes to a good location — skeptical, early, and prepared to stay a while — and kept it because listening, it turned out, was a skill she had been training through a lens for twenty years. Her recurring theme is attention as the only real instrument: the camera, the notebook, and the practice are all just ways of holding still until what is actually there consents to be seen.

Writes about: presence, slow living, manifestation.

Elsewhere: instagram.com , margauxderoos.com