RUSENG

The Metaphysics of Solitude

There is an irony I only understood years later. Once, my phone rang incessantly, and I, not knowing what I truly wanted, dreamed of only one thing—for everyone to leave me alone.

The wish came true. The phone fell silent. But the promised peace turned out to be different. It became a solitude that struck most sharply in my hometown and lay dormant in a foreign city, where my loneliness was merely part of the scenery.

In 2021, I decided to live through this feeling with a camera in my hands. The project became a ritual: one photograph a day, an attempt to capture the elusive. I was an invisible observer; my protagonists became random splashes of color in the urban landscape, silhouettes, the backs of people. Their stories were unimportant to me; what mattered was the gesture of alienation, a gaze directed not toward connection, but outward.

As I progressed, the frame purified itself. People began to appear less frequently, then almost vanished. In their place came mute witnesses to our lives: walls, garages, empty lots. The photography grew more metaphysical, and I—more alone. The fear I had tried to suppress became my companion: was this the path to absolute solitude?

This project is neither a manifesto nor a confession. It is a visual diary of a profound misconception and a slow awakening. It is about how the most terrifying metaphysics of solitude is born not from emptiness, but from the loss of connection with a world I once asked to leave me behind.

…