A Visual Exploration of Solitude
Capturing the Ambiguity of Being
// This is an invitation for you to slowly take in each piece of art displayed in this article and a recommendation for you to read on a larger screen. play your favorite melancholic, lonesome, tunes while you’re at it :) //
I often find it difficult to put the feeling of solitude into words. Unlike many other feelings with a definite inclination towards positive or negative, solitude hangs as an ambiguous cloud — hard to catch and articulate.
I have both massively grown from — and conversely have been massively pained by — solitude throughout my life, and time after time, I have never been able to adequately verbally express what the heck it is.
After all, how can one convey solitude’s cold distant cruelty? And at the same time its unbridled romantic freedom?
But perhaps something as ambiguous as solitude is best encapsulated within an ambiguous medium.
Luckily for me, one of the most extreme eras of solitude within my life coincided with the sprouting of an interest in visual media. Even luckier, I was back in the States, making my objects of visual interest all the more captivating.
So, this piece will act as a visual journey log, giving you readers — including most importantly my future self — a peek into how I interpret the lone ambiguity of being, through visual media.
One: Water at the Horizon of Infinity
The sky is one whole, the water another; and between those two infinities the soul of man is in loneliness.
My mother’s family was born and molded by the Southern seaside, so I’m near certain that deep within my genetic memory lies a great fondness towards the vast and endless water scapes of the world.
Whenever I visit expansive lakes or intimidating coastlines, I cannot help but find myself staring lost into the horizon. Such is the grandeur of water: alienating and immeasurable. It is impossible not to feel small.
And so upon lone visits to these sites of aquatic expanse, it is beyond doubt that the feeling of solitude will come a-knocking.
If you asked me to pinpoint the moments in my life in which I have felt the most lonely, among them would definitely be my visit to Cayuga Lake. It was at a time in which I felt I had taken a train to adulthood that was running much too fast and was struggling with the realization that the human experience is one journeyed mostly alone.
Deciding to solotrip to upstate New York only enhanced this.
During my final evening in town, my host, Kang Ilham, encouraged me to do some solo exploring through the beautiful tree-covered Ithaca. I decided to go sunset hunting and was instead greeted by sour clouds at the silent Cayuga Lake.
These grain-enhanced photographs should illustrate my sentiments:
Sadly, being stuck in urban Philadelphia for most of my time abroad meant limited encounters with large bodies of water. So with that, I found that my next visual venture into water’s call to loneliness was in Savin Rock, on the beaches of West Haven, Connecticut.
After being driven here by my host Tante Ina, she let me wander alone along the sands for half an hour, giving birth to what remains my favorite photo collection from my time abroad:
Sun, sand, sea, shadows: Savin Rock.
Interestingly, the contrasting tones of Cayuga’s bleak gray and Savin Rock’s gentle warmth both convey the same aura of ambiguous solitude that I could never describe even in a thousand pages.
Two: Another Stranger on The Road
A lonely road, crossed another cold state line
Miles away from those I love, purpose undefined
Without any classes on Friday, my long weekends were often filled with trips out of the city. Considering the exploratory, vague, and ofttimes expensive nature of these little expeditions, I rarely brought along travel partners.
So today, I have permanently associated solitude with the road and public transport, hammered in by my countless lone hours of traversing the East Coast by bus, train, and plane.
Whether it be while listening to melancholy John Mayer tunes on the dopey PVTA minibus, walking through the sites of my childhood memories in Kentucky, or standing around in NYC’s subway stations, I have felt this intrinsically embedded thread of solitude within the state of being on the move.
There’s just something about being on the move…
And for me this feeling is certainly not limited to photos of places which carry personal nostalgic value for me. Others’ artwork do an even better job.
For example, while in Washington DC, my absolute favorite museum exhibit in the National Gallery of Art was definitely the collection titled “American Silence” by landscape photographer Robert Adam.
And much like the title suggests, his work was heavily embedded with themes of silence — a potent symptom of solitude.
I will let his work speak for itself:
And speaking of my DC trip, Adams’ black and white must have inspired me, because on the very next morning — after spending the night on an old friend’s couch—I was moved to document these baddies:
As standalone pictures, they may seem like peeks into the life of a random person’s living conditions. But in the context of my memory, they awaken the cold, distant, uncertainty of living on the move.
Three: Far Over the Misty Mountains Cold
Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away, ere break of day
To find our long forgotten gold
I must admit, mountains in general evoke memories of rambunctious laughter and solid camaraderie. When you go scaling peaks, you go with a whole pack. I have yet to solo a mountain in my lifetime.
Despite this, the proud and distant mountaintop facade reminds me again and again of the saying,
“It’s lonely at the top.”
So when my pals and I ventured to Papandayan with the intimidating figure of Cikuray staring down at us, I had to capture its cold proud solitude.
Four: The Wandering Rückenfigur
“Art and love are the same thing: It’s the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you.”
Speaking of mountains, the artistic movement of romanticism has been claimed to be responsible for the European glorification of mountaineering, especially credited to this following work by Caspar David Friedrich:
While not particularly famous during the German painter’s lifetime, the romantic work titled “Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer” or “The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog”, has become a staple piece of artwork that has moved and inspired countless individuals. YouTube’s algorithm has even graced me with recommending two separate video essays about the painting (here and here) of which I watched years apart. This piece is that famous.
With the European mountain-inspired landscape sneakily pointing towards the center, we focus upon the lone figure staring out into the abyss. The compositional theme utilizes the rückenfigur, German for “figure from the back,” which is a (then controversial) technique that invites the viewer to develop the point of view of the figure within the artwork.
I have been captivated by this aesthetic composition and have used it time after time to capture lone subjects walking off towards their futures, in which I try to invite viewers into projecting themselves onto the subject — to explore their own journey’s pathway.
To me, the rückenfigur builds so much depth because the subject and the background are so intertwined contextually that it is hard to imagine the piece standing alone without one or the other.
And this aspect has reminded me that in our respective solitudes, we remain a crucial part of the collective scheme of nature and are constituents of a Divine Plan.
I have also recently discovered another artist masterfully executing the rückenfigur philosophy. As my Pinterest taste has taken me into the rabbit holes of nostalgic vintage aesthetics, I stumbled upon Henri Prestes’ breathtaking surreal landscape work, which mirrors the nuanced strokes of Friedrich’s bulk of art.
Here’s my fav from Prestes:
Coda
Water, travels, mountaintops, and rückenfigurs are but a few common themes I have associated with solitude. Toss in muted, flat, colors with a hint of grain and there you go: a recipe for dem lonesome vibes.
Of course, this is all very subjective. And while scrolling through this draft, I can confidently say that I am leagues away from the real deal artists in capturing these emotions.
But for me, the collections I’ve shared here carry this raw and nostalgic yearning that reminds me of my own struggle to walk through life hand-in-hand with solitude.
And I consider that a win.
And perhaps somebody shares these sentiments.
So for any one of you lonesome folk out there who have made it to the end, which collection do you think resonates with you? Which best conveys the essence of solitude that exists beyond description?
As always, thanks for stopping by :)
