Capturing Loneliness

I've always been a big fan of street photography, from those candid shots of unsuspecting people, to interesting framing of widely-known landmarks. But there is one specific type of shot that has always perplexed me: those shots that seem to drag into infinity, with almost no one in them. Long, deserted avenues, bridges, and tunnels. Pictures that, the more you look, the more you fall into.

There is something inherently unique about "empty" shots and cities. After all, cities usually represent the opposite. Cities represent people! Chaos! The rat race! And, to see these bits of nothing is just... peaceful.

So, I decided to capture a bit of this feeling. I took a few canisters of film, and my trusty LC-A+ and hit the streets. I ended up finding that transports and transport stations (Is that even a thing? You know, railway stations and bus stations, etc.) were the perfect spots to begin, as more often than not, they have those hypnotic straight lines, and if you happen to visit them during off-hours, you end up finding one or two lost souls that convey the feeling... just... right!

Call me a traditionalist, or even a hipster, but I do believe that the perfect imperfection of film only enhances these shots. Part of it is no doubt the nostalgic feel that most (if not all) analogue pictures have. It is, after all, the reason I nowadays prefer film over pixels.

Allow me to get poetic for a bit. I have lived in big cities for most of my life. Only recently did I trade them for smaller towns: Arnhem in the Netherlands, and now Stirling in Scotland. And I felt more isolated in the bigger cities. There were just too many people. It's akin to a Facebook group. If you are in a 10 or 20 person group, your voice can reach almost everyone. If you are in a bigger group, you are just one in the crowd.

But loneliness is inherently poetic, just as cities can be. And when I end up capturing one single person in a shot, I end up trying to decipher their lives, the "before the shot," and how they are going to continue on. If they are ok; if they know they were being photographed. And who they are.

I remember writing something along those lines years ago while in high school, alluding to the fact that, in our daily commute, we cross hundreds if not thousands of lives, and we simply don't really care. Not out of spite; not out of anything. Just because living in a big city is lonely. And, we really don't have the time nor the energy to get to know them. Perhaps it is even impossible and undesirable.

But maybe, just maybe, I might be getting off-topic. This is an article about photography, not the human experience, nor the loneliness of big cities. Or maybe I just discovered one of the things I enjoy the most about photography: the magic of encapsulating those "snapshots" of identity, of those I'll never get to meet. Framing them in a way that represents the environment where I've "met them," losing them in a series of straight lines and never-ending streets. Saving them in a frame or in a book. To get to know them better some other time, some other day. Creating a personality in them that might, or might not, be a semblance of who they really are and what they represent.

Or perhaps I believe I'm framing loneliness when, in actuality, I'm really projecting my own.

The films used in this essay were Cinestill 800, Postdam 100, Lomocrhome Purple 100-400, and Fujifilm c200.