“A space chosen, embraced.
Not to be mistaken for the melancholy of isolation.
It can be found in the midst of a crowd as much as far from one, alone or in company. Sometimes even in objects that seem inanimate.
It is a space in which the whisper of silence, at the root of all things, becomes perceptible — almost audible.
In solitude, the soul finds rest from the need to move, from the incessant need to do.
Here one can, simply, be.” — Jed Smith
I have always been drawn to solitude photography.
Perhaps because it is also the space that beckons me, the place where I find my most creative self. Solitude is the culmination of that lifelong draw. This is a curated series of black and white photography taken across decades of travel and living, from the canals of Venice to the mountains of the Alps, from the parks of Paris to the shores of the Mediterranean. The locations change. The theme does not.
These images were not hunted. They were found in the pause between moments, in the margins of busy places, in the quality of light falling on someone who had, for a breath, stepped out of the world’s noise and into themselves. I curated this fine art photography exhibition with particular attention to inviting the viewer to commune with each image, to slow down, and to recognize in each frame one of the many emotional registers that solitude can carry.
Because solitude is not one thing. It is not loneliness, though it can brush against it. It is not emptiness, though absence is sometimes its purest expression. It is, at its heart, a relationship — between a person and their own interior life, between a moment and the silence that holds it. Each image in this emotional photography series asks the viewer to pause, to look inward, and to find something of themselves in the frame.
To me, three images illustrate Solitude with particular clarity.
A Moment His Own shows a man, reflected in layers of glass, alone just outside his train carriage, cigarette to his lips. He is surrounded by the blur of a station, by the noise of transit, yet he is nowhere near any of it. He has stepped, completely and privately, into a moment that belongs only to him. This is solitude as interior freedom: chosen, sealed, inviolable.
No One offers a different register entirely. A stone terrace in the mountains, white sheets billowing on a line against a brooding sky, empty tables and chairs waiting in the foreground. There is no human figure — and that is precisely the point. Solitude does not require a person. It can live in objects, in spaces, in the air between things. The sheets move, the light falls, and, to me, the absence speaks as clearly as any presence could.
A Moment’s Gratitude brings solitude into its most tender form. Two people embracing on a rooftop above Paris, the Eiffel Tower barely visible in the mist behind them, the city momentarily irrelevant. They have retreated into a private world of their own making — a moment of pure gratitude for being together. This is the solitude that exists within togetherness, and it is, perhaps, the most quietly powerful kind of all.
See the entire Solitude Series.
The Solitude Exhibition is on view at my private gallery, Corso Giuseppe Mazzini 184, Ragusa Ibla, Sicily, on selective Open Studio days and by private appointment. All works are available as fine art photography prints. To inquire or request an appointment, visit jedsmithart.com.
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