If I Could, I'd Prescribe It…

• Feature article •

We first met a few years ago when I went to model for one of his students.

We immediately tuned into each other, and that same evening I returned to his studio.

Magical photographs were created then too, reflecting all the sensitivity of the person I was at the time.

This time was no different.

Working with Norbi is deeply intimate because he experiences the world differently.

He does not look at the other person and see a body.

He sees a soul.

We are not simply man and woman but two human beings.

There is no judgement, only trust and care.

It is our own small utopia, almost as if we create a protective membrane around ourselves so that the photographs can eventually be born inside it.

We both work with people, so we understand each other and fall into rhythm quickly.

We affect each other.

There is a continuous game between us: we open each other up, gently test the edges of each other's comfort zones, yet neither of us is harmed by allowing the other's energy in.

He is a man and I am a woman.

And at the same time, in that space, we are almost without gender.

Essentially present, but without sexuality.

Purely.

Almost as if, in that moment, we were best friends.

When people ask me what it feels like to be a woman, I always hesitate a little because they are touching something with two very different sides.

I love being a woman.

I think it is one of life's gifts.

We are strong, conscious, intelligent — and perhaps most importantly, we are not afraid to feel.

Then comes the harder side of the coin.

Being a woman is a constant struggle.

We fight for ourselves.

And we fight with ourselves.

In the material world, making your way has been harder — and will continue to be harder — when you are a woman.

We are shaped by emotion, the biological clock and our physical realities.

Inside, we struggle with the decision of what to reveal.

Do we show strength?

Do we become passionate, instinctive beings?

Or do we reveal the delicate porcelain doll covered in lace and hidden deep inside us, protected from everything?

But once we have fought through those tensions and found some kind of balance, triumph arrives.

The kind of triumph in which a victorious commander marches through crowds of people who adore them.

Except here, thousands of people are not cheering.

Our senses are.

Everything opens.

We feel every pore.

Every breath.

The world becomes colourful.

With that triumph, many of the sentences branded into us like stigma begin to disappear — words spoken by people we genuinely loved and allowed close.

Norbi gave me that triumph.

Almost like therapy.

If I could, I would prescribe it for heartbreak.

In August, after a long period of agonising — by which I mean roughly a year — a relationship finally ended.

I had held onto it with every nerve in my body until the very end.

I was clinging to an idea that an emotionally immature man was obviously incapable of turning into reality.

I ignored the hurtful comments he made, perhaps without even understanding how deeply they could wound someone.

Maybe he did not even remember them.

Perhaps he simply did not care.

Perhaps he was so selfish that he failed to notice how the porcelain doll beneath the lace was breaking into smaller and smaller pieces.

“I desire every other woman more than you.”

“I feel better at the gym than I do at home.”

And several similar sentences that my memory has genuinely erased.

I forgave.

Along the cracks I became stronger.

But also more flexible.

And now here I stand.

Twenty-eight years old.

Full of life.

Independent.

I know myself.

And I love who I have become.

I am not perfect.

---

I know not only my strengths, but my weaknesses too.

I am a Woman.

P.S. My secondary-school literature teacher once described Ady's Léda by turning to the teenage boys in the class and saying:

“This is the kind of woman you boys can only dream about under the duvet. Clear?!”

Art photography – details.

Part of the BANHALMI ecosystem

For the professional context and practical side of portrait photography, visit the BANHALMI professional website. Related art series, books and exhibitions are preserved in the BANHALMI ART archive.