I grew up in a remote, simple village in Extremadura. A place hidden by mountains and ancient trees; a place that seems made to be forgotten. My family is my mother, my aunt, and my godmother: women who did everything humanly possible so that we wouldn’t go hungry or cold. They fought so that my mother’s “Spanish-Norwegian sin”—meaning me—could study and have a normal life. We were poor. We are poor. But in the end, that doesn’t matter.

One day, I had to flee. In that village, there was no room for gay people. A boy who stripped down for photos had no place. A boy who kissed another in pictures had no place.

A gossip found my photos and spread them wherever they could. The sentence was clear: the “homosexual” and “nudist” didn’t fit there. So I left. I left alone and crying, with a few euros in my pocket and a fear that paralyzed my chest.

When I arrived in Madrid, I wasn’t officially an adult yet. But the truth is, the last few months had hurt so much that I felt like I was 50 years old. I had hardened quickly. Even so, the city felt giant, complex, suffocating. Madrid wasn’t my village; it was one of the largest cities in the world, full of people rushing past, ignoring my sorrows and my desires. Some smiled at me, some winked, others invited me to go “further”. I was terrified.

A few weeks later, I met Thierry, a French photographer who went crazy over my look and found a potential I had never seen in myself. He took the first photos I ever did in this city. I have hundreds. He spent time on me, he portrayed me, he contemplated me… but he never touched me. He only left me the gift of hundreds of beautiful photographs.

These are the first ones he took. I’ll tell you more later, but in the meantime, enjoy my first encounter with Thierry’s lens.

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