Walls

A couple of months ago I decided to create a street portrait project which made me go out to the streets of Edinburgh and take as many close up portraits as possible.

 

After 3 trips and asking around 80 people, I learned a few things about myself and others.

 

I noticed, that each time I was approaching another person, I had to crash through my own walls, and each time they looked at me with my camera, they had a wall in front of them too.

 

All the walls were made up of fears, fears rooted in upbringing, traumas, negative events, manipulating media, politics, religious beliefs, all the bricks of protection for ourselves, all the bricks of separation between us.

 

Some of us are completely open though, and some of us are completely closed, and anything and everything in between, but in any cases, no judgement is needed.

 

It was thoroughly interesting to observe all the walls around me, but what I especially enjoyed in this whole project were the meetings. The meetings once the walls were down, the connections, the realizations that we all can be brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers to each other, if we forget the fears we carry for a moment.

 

The man in the image is called Mark and he had many layers in front of him, but he was also curious, and we ended up talking a lot, once both of us were free of our inner obstacles. Turned out Mark loves visual arts as well, works in museums as a tour guide and enjoys taking landscape photographs himself.

 

I end with some lines from 'Echoes', a song by Pink Floyd:

 

'Strangers passing in the street

By chance, two separate glances meet

And I am you and what I see is me'.

 

Done