You Are Not Lost

This is probably Kat’s least favourite photo from our shoot — although, to her credit, she said she was easy about the photos I picked!
But to me, this photo, next to the earlier one I posted, is perhaps the best demonstration of her talent and range. Just 91 seconds after posing like that in the previous photo, she creates such a completely different mood, a completely different presence. And you are not forgiven if you think I give any direction whatsoever on emotions to my subjects!
But why did I pick this particular photo? And what exactly am I looking for in this portrait project?
I don’t have a full answer. Perhaps something to do with the weight of human emotion. These two photographs capture such different feelings, yet both make me feel that, in those fleeting moments, what this person was feeling somehow mattered enormously — as if the universe itself should have paused and bowed to the depth of this living creature’s experience, before carrying on as if nothing had happened.
There is, of course, something almost ridiculous about that thought. We are such a small and transient part of everything. And yet, from inside our own lives, joy, sadness, longing, fear, tenderness — all of it can become the entire universe.
Perhaps that is what draws me to photography. The possibility of making something fleeting feel, for a moment, consequential. A quest for human significance, precisely in the face of how insignificant we are in the greater scheme of things.
And then there is Kat holding onto that bridge beam. The intensity with which she holds it makes me think of those moments when we feel utterly lost and instinctively need to hold onto something. Perhaps this is where the place becomes important too. We don’t simply exist in spaces; we reach out to them. We use the physical world to anchor ourselves in it.
Maybe that is what I am looking for. Those fleeting encounters between a person and the world around them, where the built environment becomes more than a backdrop. Something to hold onto. Something that, even for a passing moment, tells us: You are here. You are not lost.

From the series Here We Are, July 2026.
With Kat at Hackney Wick, London.