Photographer statement: In 2011, I started a photographic project based on the rise of the Urban Millennium. My aim was to capture the consequences of population density on the behaviour of city dwellers. It was in the streets of downtown Manhattan where I created a methodology for use in other cities. By the end of 2018, I had photographed in New York, São Paulo, Seoul, Mumbai, Hong Kong, London, Lagos, Istanbul and Mexico City. In each of those cities I worked for at least one month - walking the streets every day from sunrise till sunset. Out of Place is a photographic essay that provides insight in the psychological journey of street life in modern megacities. At the rise of the "Urban Millennium" Bas Losekoot embarked on a visual exploration, considering how population density affects human behaviour. While placing his camera in the liminal spaces of the city, he addresses the state of in-between-ness of the modern urban experience. With an intuitive eye, he observes the "presentation of self" and "micro-second meetings" of everyday urban encounters. By adding drama to the trivial, Losekoot is painting the theatre of the real life, where small gestures become dramatic events. Renowned photobook designer Teun van der Heijden translated the project into an extraordinary book. The design emphasises the cinematic quality of the photographic series. It is structured with different page formats and positions, that mimics the stratification of life in modern megacities. The book is published by Kehrer Verlag.

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Photographer statement: As a street photographer, I take an observational view of how our present circumstances govern our behaviour individually and in crowds. Progressively, we appear to interact with each other only on a synthetic basis. We attempt to mass connect with the aid of modern technology, but in so doing pay less attention to individual connection. I think this is compounded by the increasingly designed environment we inhabit. The codes we see, hear and read within it impact upon our behavioural processes and ultimately isolate us. In developing scenes, I try to choose architectural backgrounds against which I can display separated figures, distributing or choreographing them across the frame. The architecture becomes incidental to a scene or situation that may or may not evolve within it. I tend to look for sites or places where people pass through without congregating. To begin with, if there is one figure or two or more figures who are positioned apart, I’ll wait until they’re joined by others in the hope that they’ll create a spatial and enigmatic dialogue. The figures often take on the look of stressed automatons acting out prescribed scenes. At a time when it’s becoming harder to discern what is human and what isn’t, their isolation from each other serves to emphasize an unreal and machine-like formality. These isolated figures don’t have to be interesting in themselves, so long as they create a narrative tension with others. It’s important that there is an element of movement from the figures. Everything must appear to be changing and in flux at the same time as retaining a spatial integrity. In an age wracked with anxiety and uncertainty, there is still a challenge to inject a boisterous creativity into a streetscape of robotic conformity.

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Photographer statement: For the past seven years, I have been photographing regularly on the streets of New York City. I am enthralled by the beauty and the variety of the perfect strangers I chance upon, and try to capture my delight in the energy and chaos that the city serves up to the careful onlooker. Like most big cities around the world, the cloud of Covid-19 has turned New York into a quieter shadow of its former self. I hope these photographs stand as a reminder of what this great city once was--and what it might be again when the pandemic has receded into our collective memories.

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Photographer statement: For about ten years, Jean-Luc Bertini has been photographing the United States following the road, in fits and starts. However, can we still photograph this country, given the profusion of its representations? In American Solitudes, the author crosses the United States and asks himself about the place of the human being in this immense setting. He invents what Gilles Mora calls in his afterword "a poetics of isolation". This is a fair balance between the contemporary photographer facing America and this humanistic touch inherited from the French tradition, which allows him to skillfully circumvent the "American photographic painting". As for Richard Ford, he questions in this preface the physiognomies of loneliness in this country: "In his photographs, we may have to work our way round to the uniqueness of American solitudes by agreeing, in nonbinary terms, that ours are ours."

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Photographer statement:

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Photographer statement:

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Photographer statement: In 2014 I moved to China to teach English in a primary school for one year. I was based in the west, in Chengdu, the capital of the Sichuan province. During this time Chengdu had a growing population of over 14 million, and was one of China's ‘pilot reform regions’. The city was experiencing rapid economic growth, resulting in heavy investment in infrastructure, such as a fast expanding metro and rail system, as well as the building of new schools to cater for the large migration of rural workers and increasing urbanisation. I was among only a handful of foreigners living in Xipu on the outskirts of the city, and would receive daily stares from locals who rarely saw or mixed with foreigners. I used my camera to record, albeit in a whimsical manner, some of the behaviours of a city experiencing a growing sense of self confidence.

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Photographer statement: A short mini-series using the everyday and mundane to convey a sense of anxiety about our collective future. Shot both in Edinburgh, Scotland and Poltava, Ukraine.

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Photographer statement: This project is actually my portfolio of street photography - it consists of single images, but the visual / thematical connection is there. I think it is about the absurdity of life, about not knowing why we are here and what we are doing. My photos are generally speaking a bit secretive, not showing the entire story and not showing what a person is exactly doing or why. This interests me in photography - it's seen as a trustworthy medium, yet it's very manipulative. I play with this element and I combine this with a more philosophical theme within my work.

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Photographer statement: The quiet moments, the quiet phases in the hectic urbanity of capturing and capturing our cities was the goal behind this series. Moments in which people are looking for relaxation, or even a short escape attempt are the situations that I have tried to capture. The pictures was done in Berlin, Vienna, Prague, Menton and Salzburg during a period of 2 years.

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