Series - FotoSlovo 2025 - Category « Portrait »

“Lost and Found” is a portrait series that examines the individual souls of lost youth who abandon home to travel around the country by hitchhiking and freight train hopping. Within their personal journey driven by wanderlust, escapism, or a search for transient jobs, they find a new family in their traveling friends. These “Travelers” are photographed on public streets using natural light, in the space in which they are found. Like graffiti on the walls of the city streets they inhabit and the trains they ride, their bodies and faces become the visual storybook of their lives. The high of freedom, however, does not come without consequence. Their lifestyle is physically risky and rampant with substance abuse.Each Traveler’s story is different, but they are bound by a sense of community. Often unseen and mistaken by their appearances, they are some of the kindest people one might meet. Their souls are open, and their gift is time. They will give you time because time is all they have. As one Traveler states, “It’s a homecoming, in a sense, a way back towards the way we were meant to be and finding a place where we belong.”