The Distance of a Glance

Every day, we pass people we will never know. Faces enter our field of vision for a few seconds: a glance, a gesture, a smile, a fleeting presence that disappears into the movement of the city before recognition can take place. We see them, but seeing is not the same as knowing.

The Distance of a Glance begins in this gap: between the photographer and the stranger, between presence and disappearance, and between what is visible and what remains beyond our reach.

The series emerges from my encounters with people in urban spaces and from the experience of living in an unfamiliar city. Each face seems to hold an unknown world, yet our access to that world is often limited to a passing moment. The people in these photographs are not presented as fully realised characters with identifiable narratives, but as presences in their own right: sometimes dwarfed by the surrounding architecture, sometimes partially concealed by the visual boundaries of the street, and sometimes meeting the camera directly. Each image holds a moment without claiming to complete its story.

For me, street photography is not an attempt to possess a moment or construct a definitive account of another person. It is a way of pausing before a presence we might otherwise pass without noticing. In this series, the camera does not seek to eliminate distance, but to make it visible. Even when a face comes close and a direct gaze is exchanged, something remains unknown. This uncertainty is not an absence to be filled, but an essential part of encountering another person.

Black and white removes the images from the familiar colour of everyday urban life, directing attention towards light, shadow, texture, movement and gesture. Within this reduced visual language, an ordinary action or fleeting expression can acquire an emotional intensity that remains open to interpretation.

The city, in this work, is more than a place of passage. It is a space where separate lives briefly draw near without necessarily gaining access to one another. What remains from these encounters is not a complete knowledge of the other, but a trace of their presence.

The Distance of a Glance is not about the people I know, but about the distance that remains between myself and those I encounter: a distance that lasts only a moment, yet carries its own weight.