Lost in Another World

Bruxelles, late afternoon. The light was fading, but not fast enough to kill the warmth spilling across the stone. I was walking the perimeter of the European Quarter when I caught this boy, not moving, not restless—just elsewhere. Legs crossed, Red Bull in the shade of his knee, a pair of thick-cushioned headphones pulling his attention far from the buses trundling behind him.

The city was loud, but he was silent.

I framed him against the soft curve of the road, letting the concrete bench anchor the composition. The wall bisects the image cleanly, dividing the raw street texture from his calm, introspective stillness. He became part of the architecture—concrete, cloth, glass, rubber—but he’s not absorbed by it. He floats.

Technically, this isn’t sharp. The plane of focus slips gently, giving the image a slight dreamlike haze—more painterly than precise. Not an accident, but not entirely deliberate either. Shooting wide open to isolate the subject, I let the shallow depth of field dictate what stayed and what blurred. In doing so, the bus and the pavement melt away, leaving only the attitude, the solitude, the pause.

Exposure rides the edge. Highlights from the backlight threaten to blow on the chrome of the vehicles. Shadows bury themselves in the folds of his jacket and the creases in the stone. But that imbalance was part of what held the moment together—nothing level, nothing clean, just quiet defiance in a loud world.

It’s not an image that demands attention. But it keeps it—softly, stubbornly, like the subject himself.