Dan Couto Writes

On ne choisit pas ce qui nous choisit.

We do not choose what chooses us.

There are photographers. And then there is Saxon Payne.

Others use technique. Saxon simply sees. And every woman who has ever looked back at him through his camera knows the difference — that rare and exquisite experience of being truly, fully seen.

It is, of course, completely ruinous.

When Juliette Burns walks into his studio, she thinks she's there to prove herself — to her world-famous photographer father and to everyone who ever doubted her. But then she meets Saxon. What ignites between them is inevitable, sublime, and only the beginning — because Juliette is carrying a secret she doesn't know she's keeping. Before she turned eight, her mother vanished her into a desert cult. All five hundred members subsequently disappeared — no bodies, no explanation, no trace. Only Juliette was left behind.

She has never looked back.

Because she can't remember.

She is about to.

Welcome to The Dark Photography Folio — six books, one universe, one of the most singular reading experiences you will ever have. It begins here, in Eyes of the Beholder, in the heat and glamour of a fashion photography studio. It then takes you places you have never dreamed, the same voice, the same wit, the same refusal to flinch, a guide on a story that expands into territory no genre has staked a claim on.

On ne choisit pas ce qui nous choisit.

We do not choose what chooses us.

Yet we are chosen.

You have been chosen.

Read it. I dare you.