City Solitude

This work investigates life in downtown Calgary during the early 2020s. As a foil to the busy, always-on lives we lead, this collection of candid street photographs is focused on liminal moments excerpted from the chaos of the city. Often the relationship between subject and setting seems to be one of containment and imposition, but a sort of inertial individual perseverance can be grasped in many of the frames. Even walled-in by concrete, steel, and glass architecture and infrastructure, we find a way to continue to ebb and flow in the course of our daily lives. These photographs centre-in on solitude, a meaningful state of the human condition that is often ignored or devalued in our current social milieu, in which we are encouraged to fill each day to the brim with productivity, entertainment, and connection. Solitude enables our capacities for contemplation and growth and stands apart from a more common but less enjoyable state of being: loneliness. Whereas solitude is a temporary mode of aloneness intentionally enjoyed and bookended by meaningful connections, loneliness stretches on without these connections. The moments I have captured photographically are quiet lapses en route or waiting that could be enjoyed but often are not. This work is an invitation to slow down, to contemplate, to choose to indulge in solitude when and where we can over the course of our days.