I took this photo in 2021, on the outskirts of Gillingham, a small town East along the River Thames from London. I was working on a project documenting the coast of Britain called 'Home is not a Place', and seeing this lonely school boy walking home, I snapped a couple of frames before he disappeared. It was only later that I noticed the tie blowing poetically in the early autumn breeze. Photographs are windows and mirrors, and I saw something of myself in the atmosphere of this photo - the precarity and loneliness you can sometimes feel as you're trying to work out who your are and where you're going. Last year, in 2025, the musician Dev Hynes / Blood Orange got in touch and asked to use this photograph for the cover of his album 'Essex Honey', which has a similar mood to the photograph. I managed to track this student down. Tunmise has now left school and from the money I received for the photo, we were able to pay him roughly the equivalent of his first year uni fees. It has been amazing to see the journey of this quiet photo taken on a midweek afternoon. It even ended up on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon!