Seclusion is the act of withdrawing from society — often a thoughtful abandonment of the world. This photography series is about isolated people in their quiet moments, captured through my lens. It is about the solitary instant that separates an individual from everything external around them. These photographs insist that every person, regardless of their surroundings, is a beautiful manifestation of loneliness. The use of black and white helped me give a melancholic tone to the images, emphasizing the feeling of solitude that runs through each frame.

Photography for me has always been visceral. It is how I express myself. From the first moment I held a camera, I understood it was my way of documenting memory — my musical instrument for composing moments, a voice that had been kept inside me silently. I was never a very social person. Most of the time, I enjoy loneliness. And yet my camera became the tool that connected me to people. Photography gave me a way to understand others that I don’t think I would have found any other way.

My practice has two sides. There is the poetic — the part of me searching for my own voice, communicating the way I see this world. That is what this portfolio is. And within these quiet, moving photographs lives the other side: the part that wants to reach an audience, and tell a story worth staying for.

— SF