CRISTIAN SOLIMENO
He was no longer in the world. The day before he had been. Earlier that same day he had been. Now he wasn’t. Everything he knew, all his memories of all his many adventures. All his special, unique insights into the world and the people he cared about, all his love and his most beautiful thoughts. His secrets that were only his and the ones he must have shared with someone else, his ability to make me feel alive and seen and known. His force, his warmth, his humour and the promise of what amazing things he would accomplish in the future…
What is that feeling? It’s an ache of course, she knows that, it’s just that it’s hard to pinpoint, hard to name. It’s not hunger, not loneliness, not dread or thirst, it’s more like the fear of them, or a memory of them perhaps. The memory of a feeling has a feeling of its own and though she doesn’t realise it, that’s what this is, something too diluted now to identify, something that fell into the great well of her being many years ago. The first drop of blood into the pure, clear water of her childhood, polluting the whole reservoir forever...
These shots were taken in London on October 2018, I’d just hopped off a train at Vauxhall station and was changing for the underground when I passed this incredibly dapper man. It was the middle of the day and of course I’d put my camera back in my bag and was by this point rushing along, running late for something or other that probably seemed very important at that moment but which I now cannot remember.
This time, I had my camera in the bag tucked neatly between my feet. Just as my train was pulling into yet another station I noticed this really elegant lady just a few seats along. Instantly, I felt that curiosity I get about some people, that sense of being drawn to them and the compulsion to take their photo. I said hello and asked if I could take her portrait and she gestured that it was fine but when she spoke no sound came out. She was sat alone, looking incredibly well put together and oh so calm
I was about 15 when Matt and his mum moved onto the estate in London, where I grew up. We soon became great friends and spent many happy hours smoking weed, playing chess, making each other laugh and talking about the world. But life has a way of creating distance where it shouldn’t be, and that’s what happened to us. He wound up going back into studying and in the end got himself to university and bagged a degree in archaeology
