It’s the perfect capture.

Available on Shutterstock under the description “Disloyal man walking with his girlfriend and looking amazed at another seductive girl”, the simple yet effective photo scenario has become one of the biggest internet memes in recent memory.

But no one is more surprised at its popularity than the man who took it.

Speaking to WIRED, Antonio Guillem is a 45-year-old photographer from Barcelona, Spain.

He spends his days taking photographs for stock image companies, and has worked with the same three models for years. His portfolio largely consists of the three “chosen ones” in the sort of “reactive poses that makes stock photography such an uncanny delight”.

It was 2015 when Guillem took the pic:

He and his models took to Gerona, an idyllic city in Catalonia, Spain, chose a spot on the street, and started shooting. “It was quite challenging to achieve face expressions that were believable,” says Guillem. “Mainly because we always have a really great work atmosphere, and almost all the time one of the models was laughing while we were trying to take the picture.”

While an album of related photographs can be found on Shutterstock, with countless other photographs featuring the same trio over the years, it was this one that won heart of a Turkish Facebook group devoted to prog rock back in January:

Kekeke. Funny.

The meme lay dormant until earlier this month when Twitter pounced and it spread like wildfire.

Obviously. Because this is what Twitter does:

I had a good few laughs there. Care to share any we might be missing?

For Guillem, the meme business has only inspired his curiosity:

“I never thought that one of my images will be that popular,” he says. “I didn’t even know what a meme is until recently, when the models started to tell me about the memes that people were doing with our work.”

Oh, where would we be without the stock image industry. Meme-less I say!

[source:wired&vox]