El Beso.

El Beso started with a simple idea: when I travel, I do not want to bring home only postcards, landscapes, and pretty views. I want to bring home human stories from the places I visited.

So I ask people to kiss. Sometimes they are lovers. Sometimes they are parents and children, family members, friends, or people who discover in that moment that affection can be photographed in more than one way.

Each image is about more than the kiss itself. It is about the city, the light, the reaction, the laugh, the yes, the no, the awkward pause, the trust, and the few minutes where a place becomes personal.

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Part of the origin story is personal. I am naturally reserved, not the kind of person who easily walks up to strangers with a bold request. I created El Beso as a way to break through that fear of approaching people, and the project forced me to step outside my comfort zone.

The idea was simple, but never easy: find people in the places I visited, ask if they would kiss each other, and let me make a photograph. Depending on who you ask, that request can feel uncomfortable, romantic, funny, suspicious, or beautiful.

For me, it became a way to bring something more meaningful home from my travels. I did not want to come back only with a postcard. I wanted to come back with a story, a beautiful image, and the memory that for a few minutes, two people somewhere in the world were a little happier because of the encounter we shared.

The reactions became part of the project: laughter, surprise, skepticism, immediate willingness, a lot of “no,” and yes — sometimes people practically ran away from me. But there were also many happy faces.

The project is about love — about what happens after the question: the connection, the place, the memory, and the story my beautiful subjects helped me create.

Sometimes I ask. Sometimes I simply catch a candid kiss already happening in front of me. Either way, the goal is the same: to hold a small moment of affection inside the larger memory of a place.

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The long-term idea behind El Beso has always been bigger than a single Instagram post or one isolated photograph. I imagine it as a photo book: mostly images, but with the stories behind them — the place, the people, the reaction, and what made that kiss happen.

Each chapter will carry the feeling of a destination: the streets, the architecture, the weather, the culture, and the human moment that joined it all together.

For now, this page becomes the living archive. As I travel, the series keeps growing.

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