Lisa’s Story:

Güzel: The Story on My Skin

I was born in Kuşadası, a seaside town on Turkey’s Aegean coast, where the sun lingers a little longer and the sea carries whispers from distant lands.

Though I left as a baby when I was adopted, that place — its salt-kissed air, its warmth, its music — lived inside me in ways I couldn’t yet understand.

Growing up, I carried a quiet, restless ache. It felt like a song I knew by heart but could never quite sing aloud.
My camera became my first true language. Photography felt like breathing — like coming home to a part of me I had lost before I ever knew it existed.

Long before I set foot back in Turkey, I named my photography company Güzel Photography and got the tattoo. 
I didn’t yet know the word’s full meaning — not in the way you know the scent of your childhood home or the rhythm of your mother’s voice.
But I felt it.
I knew deep down that photography and güzel — beauty — belonged together, woven into the same thread of my soul.

In 2022, I finally returned to Turkey.
Standing on the shores of Kuşadası at sunrise, I watched the gold light pour over the sea.
I heard the markets come alive, laughter echoing down narrow streets, and I felt the past humming all around me.

It was there that I fully understood Güzel: not just beauty as something to admire, but beauty as a way of seeing, of belonging, of loving.

Now that word Güzel is tattooed on my arm.
A single word — yet a universe.
A map home.
A living reminder of the invisible threads tying me to the sea, to my birth, to my art.

Now, every time I lift my camera, I see that word. It grounds me.
It reminds me that I was always meant to find beauty — not only in light and composition but in the tender, imperfect moments that make us human.

Güzel is not just the name of my company.
It is the name of my story.
The pulse beneath every photograph, every journey, every breath.

This tattoo is more than ink; it is a living poem on my skin.
A testament that even when we are carried far from where we began, something inside us remembers.
Something that waits patiently to be reclaimed, to be celebrated, to be loved.

And in that, there is nothing more beautiful.

Lisa Moguel – Guzel

Tattoo Art by: ______________________