This series lingers in the spaces where human presence quietly disappears from view, presenting fragments that don’t claim any resolution. They are not scenes, but traces. What remains is less narrative and more the residue of a story, asking us to draw attention inwards. Made in major cities across different countries (2025—ongoing), the photographs drift between the accidental and the composed. Their aesthetic is deliberately understated, echoing the rhythm of the street, the anonymity of urban and digital life, the invisible gestures of those we pass without knowing.

Diptych 3. Digital street photographs assembled as a diptych © David Masoko
Diptych 3. Digital street photographs assembled as a diptych © David Masoko

The pairing is essential: each image unsettles or completes the other, opening a gap in which looking can slow down. What these diptychs show emerges mostly after the moment of exposure. Through their rigorous selection, a restrained post-processing, and their assembly into pairs, rhythm and resonance open space for interpretation. The visual treatment—a reduced palette, softened edges, motion held mid-gesture—is part of the process, allowing the pictures to become detached the from time and place so that something more universal can surface in how people appear, disappear, and pass by one another.

Diptych 7. Digital street photographs assembled as a diptych © David Masoko
Diptych 7. Digital street photographs assembled as a diptych © David Masoko

I often photograph without being seen, without raising the camera, moving quietly through public space. This is not just a technical decision; it is an ethical one. It reflects a contemporary tension between visibility and privacy; the wish to witness without intrusion, to be present yet unseen. Rather than offering explanations, the work invites reflection. In an image-saturated culture, what do we withhold? And what slips away unnoticed?

— David Masoko, Winner, 2nd Place, Series, LensCulture Street Photography Awards 2025