PORTRAITS OF THE LONELY GENERATION

It’s becoming clear that loneliness has a devastating impact on our health with some researchers finding it’s a greater risk to life than obesity, alcoholism or lack of exercise, with a risk similar to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. And it’s hitting hardest on Millennials: a YouGov poll found that 30% of this age group reported always or often feeling lonely, compared with just 15% of baby boomers.

Yet a combination of shame, social stigma and feelings of vulnerability prevent people from admitting they’re lonely or from seeking help. In a series of portraits, this project speaks with young people about their feelings of loneliness and their positive experiences of admitting their solitude and looking for new friends.

THE GREAT FRIENDSHIP PROJECT
These pictures are a pro-bono commission for a London based charity that combats loneliness by putting on social events for young adults who want to make new connections in the city. They are in-camera collages: images from video calls combined with moments of my own solitude and loneliness.

Each of the people featured agreed for me to photograph them remotely: a situation that often mirrors their own living or working conditions, where they are isolated in a new city or spending long hours working remotely from home. Each person was asked to describe the situations that make them feel alone, to explain what loneliness feels like to them and why they decided to reach out for new connections. As the project progressed, a number of themes emerged from these conversations: the challenge of finding a social group in a new city; the corrosive effect of social media; feeling lost after the end of formal education and trying to find meaningful work.

Reviewing my own archive of photographs, I noticed that for many years, in moments of loneliness or anxious solitude and almost without noticing, I’ve tended to take casual snapshots of my environment. There are hundreds of pictures of hotel breakfasts, views of motorway flyovers, dark morning coffee and late nights. It seems to be my own way of coping with the loneliness of being on assignment, feeling stressed about an upcoming shoot, or just dealing with my own inner thoughts.

I decided that I’d make a connection with the project’s contributors by incorporating their portraits into my own moments of loneliness, to acknowledge my own vulnerability and to note our need for connection. The resulting in-camera collages were then combined with quotes from our conversations.