The Sun Always Leaves You Lonely

Soft colours set against the baked California earth. Silver rings and silver hair catching the sky as the wind whispers dry through thistles and grass. Dust hardens Allegra Messina’s lens as Elijah Diamond pulls shapes in the wilderness, scales trees and falls against the breeze. We are all looking for an excuse to stand passively in nothing and engage with the wind. Who can blame this boy for doing it prettily?

Denim dances with bare skin under Kevin Ipalari’s curation. We are reminded of the fragility of flesh under such fabrics, next to hard ground, with the ravenous sun eating our time away. Squinting only blurs the moment’s movement. He is helpless as everyone, reduced to loneliness and strung up by the very air he breathes. Look at the decisive lines on the clothes: how they make softness a virtue and the dip into exhaustion a thing to be desired. There is no despair. Defiance is what rests behind these eyes.

See - even topless, solitude transforms us. As if the colour of the sky could enter through our pores, or we ourselves could dissipate into the clouds, rough clothes try their best to pacify the landscape. Try hard enough and you can be this boy, sole figure on the plane, the significant one in this reality. All you need is a scrap of land and a camera. We are all the focal point of a universe, imposed on a backdrop much richer than we are.