In August 2023, I worked with photographer Olga Shpak to professionally document a selection of my paintings.

At first, the purpose seemed practical: to create high-quality images for a catalogue and for presenting the work online.

But photographing an artwork raises a surprisingly difficult question.

How do you translate a physical object into an image without losing what makes it physical?

A painting exists through scale, surface, colour, detail and its relationship with the space around it. A photograph inevitably changes that experience. It selects a distance, a light, a perspective and a frame.

I began to understand documentation not simply as recording an artwork, but as creating the way many people will encounter it for the first time.

For an artist, this matters.

The original work may exist in one place. Its image can travel much further — through catalogues, exhibitions, applications, publications and screens.

The photograph cannot replace the artwork.

But sometimes it is the photograph that opens the door to it.