I DO ME
The Manifesto of Presence
WHY | The Need for Truth
In a world that photographs itself endlessly, authenticity has become a memory.
Every image is edited, every pose rehearsed, every gaze calibrated for approval.
We have replaced truth with performance and beauty with algorithmic consensus.
I was born into that distortion. I lived through it. I mastered its mechanics in business, music, and art, until I no longer recognized myself inside what I produced. That is when the protest began: a quiet but absolute refusal to imitate.
I DO ME was born from that refusal, not as rebellion, but as reclamation.
It is the moment one decides to stop performing and start existing.
To take back authorship over one’s presence. To create from the unedited self.
This project is not about ego. It is about accountability.
To say I DO ME is to take full responsibility for one’s truth.
WHO | The Human Behind and Before the Lens
MISA : a name inherited from my grandfather, the painter Paolo Galeffi, who used creation as redemption after war and guilt. He painted until his hands trembled, signing his rebirth under the name MISA. Through him, I learned that art is not a career, it is an act of conscience.
I am not his continuation, but his echo. My medium is different: I use light, sound, and human encounter. But the intention remains the same, to turn experience into truth.
I am not interested in photography as reproduction. I am interested in presence as revelation. My work is what happens when two realities agree, even for a brief instant, to stop pretending.
The people before my lens are not subjects. They are mirrors, each one a fragment of my autobiography written through others. Through their faces, I learn where truth still lives.
WHAT — A 25-Year Act of Authorship (2025–2050)
I DO ME is a 25-year work of art, a continuous exploration of authenticity through portraiture, sound, and written reflection.
It is both archive and autobiography: a slow, deliberate collection of encounters where the human presence reclaims its dignity.
The project is divided into five chapters, each lasting five years. Each chapter explores a different tension zone of modern life, spaces where truth is tested by conformity.
2025–2030: Women Who Build Truth, creators, leaders, and mothers whose presence resists industrial beauty.
2030–2035: The Makers, artisans, builders, and thinkers whose work restores meaning to creation.
2035–2040: The Believers, those who live by inner conviction rather than collective illusion.
2040–2045: The Rebels of Silence, voices that protect integrity in a noisy world.
2045–2050: The Witnesses, those who have lived truth long enough to become its custodians.
Every session, every photograph, audio fragment, or diary line, becomes part of a living archive housed in The Crealoft (Amersfoort, The Netherlands). Each decade, the work will evolve into curated exhibitions and limited editions, not to promote but to preserve the lineage of truth.
WHERE | The Crealoft: A Laboratory of Presence
The Crealoft is not a studio. It is a living organism, a space designed for slowness, attention, and encounter. Every corner has its function: light, silence, movement, reflection. It is here that I DO ME is lived, not performed.
The Crealoft welcomes those who dare to be seen without armor. It is a safe room for the unedited self.
Sessions are held in silence, natural light, and minimal structure. There are no stages, no stylist, no artifice. The air carries the rhythm of real time. Every sound, every pause, every imperfection becomes part of the work.
The Crealoft is also where the archive breathes, photographs, field notes, soundscapes, and fragments of writing stored and curated as the memory of this ongoing experiment.
HOW | The Method of Encounter
My process is simple, but not easy.
Preparation: Every meeting begins long before the session. I study the silence between words. I listen to who the person is when they stop performing their biography. Only when the rhythm feels true does the meeting take place.
Environment : Natural light, minimal tools. A neutral space with no visual noise. The aim is to remove all symbols of control and comfort. What remains is presence.
The Meeting: I do not shoot; I wait. I do not direct; I meet. I allow the person to arrive in their own body. When the mask falls, the lens becomes a witness, not a weapon.
The Capture: The click of the shutter is a punctuation mark in an ongoing dialogue. What I capture is not a face, but a frequency, a tone of truth that existed for a second and may never return.
The Reflection: After every session, I write and record. Words and sound complete what the image cannot hold. Together they form the field note of the encounter.
The Integrity Check: Every image passes through ethical review. Consent, context, and dignity are non-negotiable. A portrait is a shared act, not a possession.
WHAT IT MEANS — Beyond the Image
I DO ME is not about photography. It is about the right to exist without correction.
It is a refusal of industrial beauty and cultural obedience. It is an ethical movement disguised as an art project.
Beauty, for me, is truth made visible. It may look imperfect, unfiltered, asymmetrical, but it breathes. Perfection is dead matter; truth is alive.
Every person I meet becomes part of this experiment in honesty. Some stay in the frame. Some remain in silence. All are essential to the continuity of what I call real art, art that records being, not branding.
THE FIRST CHAPTER (2025–2030) | Women Who Build Truth
The first cycle of I DO ME belongs to women.
Not as subjects, but as co-authors of presence.
It is devoted to women who create, lead, build, and dream, those who transform their surroundings through resilience, intelligence, and love of craft.
In an age that demands women to perform perfection, I wish to give them a space to exist unfiltered. No makeup, no instruction, no approval, only presence.
Each portrait in this chapter is a moment of resistance against digital sameness. It is the visual memory of truth before it is retouched by expectation.
The women I meet are not models; they are architects of authenticity. Through them, I learn how beauty survives distortion. Through them, I learn that strength is not dominance, but coherence.
This chapter will evolve into a living archive and an exhibition, both a document and a tribute to the feminine as an original frequency of creation.
THE LEGACY | Art That Belongs to Time
I DO ME is designed to outlive trends, markets, and algorithms. It belongs to time, not to commerce. Every portrait, recording, and text will remain accessible as part of the MISA Archive, preserved by the ITECA Foundation to protect integrity and authorship.
When the cycle concludes in 2050, I will not call it an end. It will simply be the record of one artist’s dialogue with reality, a chronicle of 25 years spent learning how to see without lying.
This work is my inheritance and my offering: the continuation of my grandfather’s belief that beauty can survive guilt, and the proof that art can still be a moral act.
THE INVITATION
If you are someone who builds, with hands, with words, with courage and you want to be seen as you are, not as you should be, you are welcome here.
Bring your silence. Bring your scars. Bring your truth.
Leave your perfection outside the door.
“I stop asking the world for permission to be real.
I give that permission to myself and to everyone I photograph.”
MISA
