Artist Statement | Misa

I do not photograph people. I meet them.

My work is not about images, it is about presence.

What interests me is the fragile instant when performance collapses and something real begins to breathe.

That moment is not aesthetic. It is human. It is the only thing worth keeping.

I come from the world of systems, business, control, repetition. I know what it means to succeed by imitation.

But at some point, imitation becomes unbearable.

The soul starts to protest.

“I DO ME” was born from that protest, not as rebellion, but as reclamation.

It means: I take responsibility for my truth.

I refuse to edit myself to fit. I stand in what is real, even when it trembles.

My studio, The Crealoft, is not a stage but a laboratory of presence.

No poses. No instructions. No rehearsed vulnerability.

I wait until the mask falls, and then I press the shutter.

That is the contract between me and whoever stands before the lens:

We stop pretending for a moment longer than usual.

And in that moment, truth appears.

I work within the Situationist tradition, where life itself becomes the medium.

Each session, each meeting, each silence is an experiment in honesty.

The portrait is not the goal, it is the trace of a shared event.

An encounter between two realities that briefly agree to be unprotected.

My current work, the 25-year project I DO ME (2025–2050), is an autobiography written through others.

It is a continuous exploration of authenticity across time and human diversity.

The first five-year chapter is devoted to women, makers, creators, and carriers of real, unindustrial beauty.

They are not subjects to be photographed; they are mirrors through which I write my own evolution.

I do not chase perfection.

I do not manufacture beauty.

I refuse the industrial logic of images that look alive but are not.

Beauty, for me, is truth made visible.

A scar, a silence, a gaze, that is beauty-full.

Art, to me, is not self-expression. It is self-possession.

It is the act of standing inside one’s own frequency without distortion.

To photograph is to tune myself, and the person before me, back to that original tone.

I work slowly, deliberately, sometimes painfully.

I build legacy through self-possession, not exposure.

My art belongs to no algorithm, no market, no trend. It belongs to time.

“I stop asking the world for permission to be real.

I give that permission to myself and to everyone I photograph.”

MISA | Paolo Maria Pavan

Amersfoort, The Netherlands

The Crealoft | AIDUMI.COM