There’s a version of every big moment where you’re still performing it — smiling for the room, narrating the feeling instead of having it. And there’s the version underneath that. The one where you stop explaining yourself and just let it happen.
That’s what I photograph.
Always in black and white, because color asks you to notice the room. Black and white asks you to notice the person.
I get asked a lot why I shoot such different sessions — a proposal on the Pont Alexandre III, a self-portrait session in a quiet apartment, a personal branding shoot for a founder who needs a headshot that doesn’t look like a headshot. On paper, they’re three different services. In practice, they’re the same photograph, taken three times.
They are all about the courage.
The courage to show up, exactly as you are.
And the courage to be seen.
Proposals: the courage to ask
A proposal is one of the only moments left in adult life where someone says the true thing out loud, in public, with no way to take it back. I’m not there to direct it — I’m there to disappear into the background so the two of you can have it without an audience. The best proposal photos aren’t the kiss. They’re the half-second before it, when one person is still deciding whether to be brave.
Self-portraits: the courage to be seen
This is the session people are most nervous to book and least likely to regret. Not because of what you wear or don’t — because of what happens after twenty minutes in front of a camera, when you stop holding your face a certain way and just… exist in it. I don’t retouch you into someone else. I photograph the version of you that’s already there, underneath the version you present. Black and white does a lot of the work here — it strips out everything except shape, shadow, and expression, which is usually more flattering than people expect.
Personal branding: the courage to claim it
Most personal branding photography looks like a stock photo of confidence — arms crossed, forced smile, blazer. I shoot the opposite: photos that look like evidence, not performance. The goal isn’t to look approachable. It’s to look like someone who doesn’t need to explain what they do, because the photo already says it.
Why one photographer, three sessions
These aren’t three brands stitched together. They’re one question, asked in three different rooms: what does it look like when you stop performing and start being seen?
If you’re planning a proposal in Paris, if you’ve been putting off a self-portrait session for two years or need to define or redefine who you are online, or if your current headshot makes you wince — I’d love to talk. Every session starts the same way: a conversation about what you actually want the photo to say, not just show.
Black and white because it was never meant to be explained.
Julie Tower | Photographer | Black+White | Paris | Capturing Moments that Refuse to be Explained.
