Everyone knows how the most populated places on earth can become the most lonely. And I never knew it better than my first year in Boston.

I had always been in love with the city. Upon first moving there I expressed nothing but adulation for its streets. I would step down Huntington only to immerse myself in its crowds, to feel an ardor for being enveloped by the intricacies of lives I'd never know. I took time out each day to study warm brick walls and cool cobblestone streets, carving paths for myself over sidewalk and through meandering alleyway after alleyway. But the methodical nature of the passing lives began to resemble for me the mixing of a batter. At first the ingredients are churned and the batter smooths and loosens and congeals, and everything blends in harmony.  But the churning never stopped, and the mix slowly stiffened, hardening and hardening until it no longer stirred at all. And eventually silence set in. Car horns faded to disgruntled murmurs. Faces no longer housed the lively characters of elseworlds, but only cool glazed eyes bonded in similarity. And those old brick walls stretched in height to parapets guarding sunlight from the violent touch of my skin. And suddenly everything was alone.
And when this happens you begin reaching, stretching your eyes to the horizons, to the features of distant towers looking for signs of change, for breaks in the sameness, but the more you reach the more you lose sight of your current position, the larger the gaps become between you and the people once nestling you in, the more where you are becomes where you mustn't be, and the more your equilibrium is lost in a haze.

On this day, I set out with my camera with the intent of capturing this effect. The subtle tones of these disarming spaces, the methodical building of distances, and the desultory loss of equilibrium.