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BBC News
10-06-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
'Humans need solitude': How being alone can make you happier
From spending time by yourself to making the most of being single, flying solo can be fulfilling – a philosophy championed by a new wave of books. In Wim Wenders' recent film Perfect Days, the main character, a Tokyo toilet cleaner, spends many of his hours in solitude; watering plants, contemplating, listening to music and reading. While more characters are introduced as the film develops, for many viewers its earlier moments are, indeed, perfect; described by the BBC's own Nicholas Barber as a "meditation on the serenity of an existence stripped to its essentials", it really struck a chord. No wonder. Thoughtful and positive outlooks on solitude have been taking up more and more space on our screens, bookshelves and smartphones, from podcasts to viral TikToks. Seemingly, there's never been a better time to be alone. In the past couple of years, several titles on the topic have been released, with a few more in the works. Solitude: The Science and Power of Being Alone, and Solo: Building a Remarkable Life of Your Own hit the shelves in 2024, and Nicola Slawson's Single: Living a Complete Life on Your Own Terms was published in February. Then last month saw the release of Emma Gannon's much-anticipated novel Table For One; having made her name with non-fiction books questioning traditional ideas of success and productivity, Gannon is now reconsidering modern relationships, in a love story focusing on a young woman finding joy in being alone, rather than with a partner. Later this year, two more self-help guides, The Joy of Solitude: How to Reconnect with Yourself in an Overconnected World and The Joy of Sleeping Alone, are coming out, as well as a paperback, English translation of Daniel Schreiber's Alone: Reflections on Solitary Living, which originally came out in Germany in 2023. A shift in attitudes Packed with keen observations and helpful tips, this new wave of books aims not only to destigmatise solitude, but also to make a case for its benefits and pleasures. Such a powerful stream of publications might come as a surprise, at first, to everyone who has lived through the pandemic and inevitably heard of – or got a bitter taste of – the so-called "loneliness epidemic", a term popularised in 2023 by then US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. "Post pandemic, there [was] a huge focus on loneliness, for a really good reason," says Robert Coplan, a professor in psychology at Carleton University in Ottawa and author of The Joy of Solitude: How to Reconnect with Yourself in an Overconnected World. But because of the concerns about the effects of loneliness, he says, solitude ended up "with a bit of a bad reputation – throwing the baby out with the bath water, so to speak". Now, though, the discourse is course-correcting itself. The distinction between loneliness and solitude, according to Coplan, is an important one, and many writers echo this sentiment. "While loneliness is a serious and harmful problem for some people, it is a subjective state very different from solitude, that someone has [actively] chosen for positive reasons," says journalist Heather Hansen. In 2024, she co-authored the aforementioned Solitude: The Science and Power of Being Alone with Netta Weinstein and Thuy-vy T Nguyen. Hansen had watched the media telling us we're very lonely for a while; but as a counter to this narrative, she says, "people are reflecting on their own lives and recognising that they are choosing solitude for various reasons that benefit them". The message of rom-coms, love songs and Jane Austen novels – that we need a partner to be fulfilled – isn't backed by data – Peter McGraw "I have a theory that since the pandemic we've been able to clearly understand the difference between loneliness and chosen solitude," says Emma Gannon, who is also a big proponent of "slow living". The extremes of the pandemic – being cooped up with all your loved ones, or, contrastingly, going for months without human contact – had prepared us, Gannon says, "to have nuanced conversations about the differences between isolation and joyful alone time". Nestled cosily within these timely conversations is Gen Z-ers and millennials' re-evaluation of romantic relationships and enthusiastic embracing of single life, alongside a careful reassessment of interpersonal relationships in general. Gannon's new novel might be a fictional depiction of a young woman reinvesting in a relationship with herself, but it will ring true to many readers who grapple with what are increasingly seen as outdated societal expectations to "settle down". According to a 2023 US survey, two out of five Gen Z-ers and millennials think marriage is an outdated tradition, and in the UK only just over half of Gen Z men and women are predicted to marry, according to the Office of National Statistics. In April, a viral TikTok, with over one million likes and close to 37,000 comments, showcased one man's perspective on dating women who live alone, and like it this way. Many women deemed the analysis "spot on" and related eagerly. Nicola Slawson, who based Single: Living a Complete Life on Your Own Terms on her popular Substack The Single Supplement, isn't surprised. "The number of people living alone in the UK has been steadily increasing over the last decade or so," Slawson points out, with this fuelling a cultural shift towards the acceptance of single people, and putting a focus on "freedom and independence, and especially a rejection of domesticity, as women are realising they don't have to put up with things they might have been expected to in previous generations". Having said that, our cultural fascination with being alone is deeply rooted. Capturing the beauty of solitude has been a focus for numerous artists over the centuries – from German romanticist Caspar David Friedrich, whose great works include Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, (c. 1817), which can be seen in the Hamburger Kunsthalle art museum's collection in Germany, to the revered 20th-Century US artist Edward Hopper, and his paintings of solo city dwellers. A New Yorker review of the 2022 Hopper retrospective at the city's Whitney museum noted, "Everything about the urban life he shows us is isolated, uncommunal – and yet his images of apparent loneliness seem somehow anything but grim, rather proudly self-reliant." Daniel Schreiber believes the correlation between people living alone, sans partner, and being lonely has traditionally been overestimated. "Society understands better now that romantic love is not the only model to live by, or something to wish for," he adds. "There are different ways of life, and it's not as necessary to be in a traditional romantic relationship." Revel in the soft blanket, the sound of music, the taste of your food. What can you see, smell, touch and sense when you are alone? – Emma Gannon In Solo: Building a Remarkable Life of Your Own, Peter McGraw, a self-titled "bachelor", and professor of marketing and psychology at the University of Colorado, makes a similar point, with gusto. "There's a lot of mythology around single living, and a failure to understand the reasons marriage was invented – mostly as a business arrangement," he says. "Frankly, the message of rom-coms, love songs and Jane Austen novels" – that we need a partner to be fulfilled – "isn't backed by data," he says, "if we look at the longitudinal data": many studies cited in Solo show that even if personal happiness spikes around marriage, it doesn't last. Even within a relationship, traditional routines can be upended to allow for more alone time, as advocated in The Joy of Sleeping Alone. Its author, yoga and meditation teacher Cynthia Zak, noticed that many women prefer sleeping alone to sleeping in the same bed as their partners, and decided to write the book, originally in Spanish, in order to advocate for "more space to express what we need and feel, more opportunities to let go of fears and limiting beliefs, and more freedom to choose". How to be alone well If being, and doing things, alone is increasingly widespread – and stigma-free – then how to make the most of it? A couple of key factors everyone agrees on are finding a healthy balance between solo time and communing with others – and having the ability to choose solitude, rather than being forced to experience it. "The greatest indication of success in time alone is that a person has chosen that space believing that there is something important and meaningful there," says Hansen, adding that solitude is a "neutral blob of sculpting clay; it can be whatever we mould it into". Fittingly, according to McGraw it's perhaps best to not mould said blob into "lying in bed, vaping and ordering Uber Eats". Rather, he suggests channelling alone time into creative pursuits and pastimes that tend to blossom in solitude; a walk or a run, people-watching at a cafe, going to a museum and "taking it all in, as fast or slow as you can". Or how about "sitting in a bath listening to Vivaldi", he adds more specifically, or taking an online course? Paul Storrie For those who are single, leaning into potentially blissful solitude – instead of waiting for it to be over – is advised, Slawson says. "I used to find myself putting off doing things until I 'settled down' or until I found a partner, but you need to live the life you have got and squeeze as much joy as possible from it instead of feeling like you're in a waiting room, waiting for your life to start," she says. And when societal pressure builds? "Don't default to any type of thinking or a script," McGraw suggests. "The nice thing is, that there's now an alternative script." More like this: • The rise of the slow living moment • Ann Patchett on writing amid chaos • The star tidying guru who transformed our homes More broadly, alone time is full of potential and possibilities. "I think solitude inspires a wonderful sense of creativity, it gets the juices flowing and encourages problem solving," Gannon says. She suggests treating solitude as an adventure – or a chance to reconnect with yourself, through journalling or revelling in your senses: "The soft blanket, the sound of music, the taste of your food. What can you see, smell, touch and sense when you are alone?". Further turning inward, says Zak, can deepen one's understanding of solitude; she suggests paying attention to moments of solitude, and turning these moments into recurring rituals that aid relaxation and reflection by practice. "Ask yourself, what is the thing that you most enjoy being alone with? Make a jewel of the moment you choose and give yourself the task to cherish this specific space more and more," she says. And most importantly, if obviously? It's about mixing things up. "Humans do need social interaction – but I would also say that humans need solitude," says Coplan. "It's finding the right balance that is the key to happiness and wellbeing. Everyone has a different balance that's going to work for them." -- If you liked this story, sign up for The Essential List newsletter – a handpicked selection of features, videos and can't-miss news, delivered to your inbox twice a week. For more Culture stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
Mail & Guardian
30-05-2025
- Lifestyle
- Mail & Guardian
There are new killers on the loose
Purple haze: Jacaranda in bloom are beauties, but condemn the aliens. There it was in stark black and white, the sad news that legendary Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado had died at the age of 81 in Paris. It is terrible news but the great man lived a full life travelling to the remotest corners of the world to document the lives of people, the environment and the relationship between the two. Sometimes brutal but always beautiful, his images of human suffering led some to call him the 'aesthete of misery'. Probably his most well-known image is the one of hundreds of workers at the Serra Pelada gold mine in Brazil swarming up crude wooden ladders weighed down by heavy containers. But there are thousands of other equally unforgettable images — always black and white and often with the contrasts of light accentuated — from Salgado's trips to the wildest areas on Earth, from the Amazon to the Arctic. In the documentary The Salt of the Earth, co-produced by German director Wim Wenders and Salgado's son Juliano Ribeiro Salgado, the acclaimed photographer, a man after my own heart, says: 'We humans are terrible animals.' Something that I didn't know about Salgado is that after experiencing the horrors of the Rwandan genocide, in 1998 he put aside his cameras and founded the Instituto Terra. In a grand reforesting project he planted hundreds of thousands of trees in the Rio Doce valley in Brazil. Amid the relentless barrage of stories about the forests being chopped down, or cleared to make room for planting, or just burnt in raging fires caused by climate change, these projects offer a glimmer of hope. And the sheer numbers of the trees planted are truly awe-inspiring. India has an impressive number of inspiring characters who are leading the way in reforestation projects. Jaggi Vasudev, more commonly referred to as Sadhguru, founder of the Isha Foundation, says his ambition is to plant 2.4 billion trees. And with his gleaming white turban and flowing white beard the yogi, mystic, teacher and author has the gravitas to convince even the doubters that this ambitious plan is completely achievable. Here in Johannesburg we are constantly told we live in 'the biggest man-made forest in the world' with more than 10 million trees growing in the city. But Johannesburg is in danger of losing its place as the leading tree destination in the world, because our trees are not immune to the city's dangerously high crime rate. As yet the trees don't have a category in the crime stats, but if the rate of attrition continues to climb, the police commissioner will be reeling off some depressing figures of deaths, damage and murders. The biggest culprit is the aptly named shot hole borer, also known as PSHB (the P stands for polyphagous, which means the beetle can feed on multiple types of trees). Here is an expert definition of this criminal's modus operandi: 'The beetle infests trees by tunnelling deep into the trunk or branches and depositing a fungus that effectively poisons — and eventually kills — the tree. If the tree is a PSHB 'reproductive host' species, then the borer will reproduce in the tree at an alarming rate: a reproductive host tree can house up to 100 000 borer beetles. The offspring then fly out of the host tree and infest more trees.' Evidence of this habitual criminal's killing spree can be seen all over Johannesburg. Bare, blackened tree skeletons with rotting branches. Unfortunately the lethal little bug is not the only criminal attacking our trees. Humans won't let a two-millimetre sized insect from Vietnam outdo them when it comes to murdering trees. I have seen jacaranda trees viciously attacked by chainsaw-wielding suburbanites because they are unhappy with the 'mess' from the leaves and the beautiful mauve blossoms when they fall. I have seen a majestic plane tree in Bez Valley ruthlessly sawn down at ground level because a homeowner had opened a hair salon in his garage and didn't want the tree to impede the entrance. I have seen massive oak trees subjected to hideously slow deaths by criminals who set fire to piles of the trees' own leaves at the base of the trunk. These are trees that are on the pavement and supposedly belong to the city, but much like the smash-and-grabbers at traffic lights or armed hijackers who drive off with your car, not many of the tree killers are brought to justice. The problem here might be that all of the trees mentioned are what is politely termed 'exotics' brought in from Europe and South America to line the streets of the first suburbs of the rapidly expanding city. Some, like the jacaranda, adapted so well to their new home and reproduced so abundantly that they have been declared 'alien invasive plants guzzling up all the town's water and are harmful to the environment and surrounding species'. Sounds familiar doesn't it? Even by today's standards the tree situation cannot be called a genocide but Sebastião Salgado would surely have found inspiration here for his searing photographs.
The Guardian
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Sebastião Salgado captured the world like no other photographer
It's a testament to the epic career of Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado, who died this week at age 81, that this year has already seen exhibitions of hundreds of his photos in Mexico City, France and southern California. Salgado, who in his lifetime produced more than 500,000 images while meticulously documenting every continent on earth and many of the major geopolitical events since the second world war, will be remembered as one of the world's most prodigious and relentlessly empathetic chroniclers of the human condition. An economist by training, Salgado only began photographing at age 29 after picking up the camera of his wife, Lélia. He began working as a photojournalist in the 1970s, quickly building an impressive reputation that led him to the prestigious Magnum Photos in 1979. He spent three decades photographing people in modern societies all over the world before stepping back in 2004 to initiate the seven-year Genesis project – there, he dedicated himself to untouched landscapes and pre-modern human communities, a project that would guide the remainder of his career. His late project Amazônia saw him spend nine years preparing a profound look into the terrain and people of the Amazon rain forest. In 2014 the German director Wim Wenders teamed up with the photographer's son Juliano Ribeiro Salgado to co-produce a documentary celebrating Salgado's work titled The Salt of the Earth. While covering 40 years of Salgado's creative output, the film also centers around his decision to temporarily abandon photography after witnessing firsthand the horrors of the Rwandan genocide. Amid that crisis he founded his Instituto Terra in 1998 – ultimately planting hundreds of thousands of trees in an effort to help reforest Brazil's Rio Doce valley – and through his communion with the land slowly pieced his way back to photography. Salgado tirelessly, and probably also recklessly, threw himself into his work – while documenting Mozambique's civil war in 1974 he ran afoul of a landmine, and later, in Indonesia in the 1990s, he caught malaria, leading to ongoing medical issues for the remainder of his life. He spent nearly two months walking Arctic Russia with the Indigenous Nenets, encountering temperatures as cold as -45C, and he also recounted walking nearly 1,000km through Ethiopia because of the lack of roads. Late in life, Salgado was forced to have a surgical implant in order to retain use of his knee in the course of making his Amazônia project. His biblical landscapes are often taken from thousands of feet in the air – one imagines him leaning out of a helicopter, angling for the perfect framing. He was known for utilizing virtually every mode of conveyance available in pursuit of the new and unseen – car, truck, ship, helicopter, plane, even canoe, hot-air balloon, Amazon riverboat and others. Prints of Salgado's work – always black and white, and generally printed at a dazzlingly high contrast – were as sizable as his ambitious, landing as overwhelming presences in galleries and museums. He was known for blacks that were as inky as they come, and his landscapes also show a remarkable obsession with rays of light shining through rainclouds, around mountains and off of water. He loved the graininess that came from film – so much so, that when he finally traded in his trusty Leica for a digital camera, he often digitally manipulated his images to bring in a grain reminiscent of real film. For as much as Salgado was a photographer of extremes, he could also do tonal nuance – many of his landscapes are only capable of capturing their terrain's immensity due to his careful use of mid-tones, and Salgado's human portraiture often abandoned the high contrast for a rich subtlety. No matter how enormous his subjects were, he always retained a remarkable human touch. When photographing Brazil's Serra Pelada gold mine he made images showing the workers as thousands of ants scrambling up perilously sheer walls of dirt, yet also captured indelible expressions of effort and pride on the faces of individual, mud-soaked laborers. His image of the Churchgate train station in Bombay, India, shows thousands of commuters in motion, looking like a literal flood of humanity surging around two waiting trains. One snap of a firefighter in Kuwait working to cap the oil wells that Saddam Hussein set ablaze shows a man hunched over in a posture of utter exhaustion, one of countless examples of Salgado's incredible ability to limn the human form via film. Given everything that Salgado shot over his incredible six decades of work, it's hard to imagine what else he could have done. Upon turning 80 last year, he had declared his decision to step back from photography in order to manage his enormous archive of images and administer worldwide exhibitions of his work. He also showed his dim outlook for humanity, telling the Guardian: 'I am pessimistic about humankind, but optimistic about the planet. The planet will recover. It is becoming increasingly easier for the planet to eliminate us.' It will probably take decades to fully appreciate and exhibit Salgado's remaining photographs, to say nothing of grappling with the images he showed during his lifetime. One hopes that amid a period of increasing global strife, environmental collapse and threats to the mere notion of truth, this remarkable output will remain a beacon of decency and humanity – and help us chart a path back from the brink.
South China Morning Post
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
Sebastiao Salgado, award-winning Brazilian photographer, dies at age 81
Brazilian photographer and environmentalist Sebastiao Salgado, known for his award-winning images of nature and humanity, has died at age 81. Instituto Terra, which was founded by him and his wife, confirmed the information Friday, but did not provide more details on the circumstances or where he died. The French Academy of Fine Arts, of which Salgado was a member, also confirmed his death. The photographer had suffered from various health problems for many years after contracting malaria in the 1990s. 'Sebastiao was more than one of the best photographers of our time,' Instituto Terra said in a statement. 'His lens revealed the world and its contradictions; his life, [brought] the power of transformative action.' 'We will continue to honour his legacy, cultivating the land, the justice and the beauty that he so deeply believed could be restored,' it added. One of Brazil's most famous artists, though he always insisted he was a photographer first, Salgado had his life and work portrayed in the documentary film The Salt of the Earth (2014), co-directed by Wim Wenders and his son, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado.
Associated Press
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado dies at age 81, his institute says
SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazilian photographer and environmentalist Sebastião Salgado, known for his award-winning images of nature and humanity, has died at age 81. Instituto Terra, which was founded by him and his wife, confirmed the information Friday, but did not provide more details on the circumstances of Salgado's death or where it took place. 'Sebastião was more than one of the best photographers of our time,' Instituto Terra said in a statement. 'His lense revealed the world and its contradictions; his life, (brought) the power of transformative action.' Salgado's life and work were portrayed in the documentary film 'The Salt of the Earth' (2014), co-directed by Wim Wenders and his son, Juliano Ribeiro Salgado.
