WONDROUS STRANGE

“Every image is in some way a portrait, not in the way that it would reproduce the traits of a person, but in that it pulls and draws (this is the semantic and etymological sense of the word), in that it extracts something, an intimacy, a force.”
―Sally Mann

This group of images are of children’s portraits that were developed over the past few years. Sometimes these are children of friends, others my own children. Sally Mann once said that every image is in some way a portrait, an intimacy, a force, and this idea stayed with me ever since. Since the age of thirteen, I have been taking photographs of everyday life. I have collected moments of joy, festivity but also suffering, and through photography have constructed my own memory, my own fiction.

These photographs aim to capture the fragile, the innocent emotions and developing identities of the adolescent models. In a way, they speak about something akin to a delicate but persistent memory that cannot be fully restored. Images that are enigmatic fascinate me, where there is an intriguing, disturbing feeling that reflects life’s challenges. Wondrous Strange’s photographs trigger within us a sense of something irremediably lost but still present. Far from being instantaneous shots capturing merely the aura of a city and its people ―ideas developed in other projects such as London Every Day― they present timeless, dignified children.