Over the past few years, I have been exploring all sorts of rooftops in order to take photos of the city from a fresh angle. I typically picked aged buildings with no alarms or security cameras and I favoured sunny days for better luminosity. I started ascending the structure an hour or two before the sunset to capture a favourable light and outline better silhouette of people. The scent of concrete scorched by the sun all day lingered in my nose as I passed the last door to the outside. After climbing a ladder or two, I was in a good position and all I had to do was to observe and to patiently wait for something to happen around me.

Standing alone on my small concrete land above the bustling city felt like an invitation to think and contemplate. I have been trying to figure out what this beauty I am after. Of course, it is not just the aesthetic quality of the city; neither its prettiness, nor its flaws. Most of the rooftops I photographed are rather chaotic, no effort has been made to beautify them at all. Although their desolation and bleakness can be visually powerful; they are by themselves too empty for emotional expression. It takes a human touch to give these scenes a soul.

As soon as someone sets foot on the roof, the opportunity of capturing a moving scene is made possible. Through my lens, I can sense both the toughness of the passing time emanating from the desolated landscape and also the hope embodied by the person emerging from the scene.

Several people asked me if these scenes were staged. This question always left me baffled. First because I imagine how much hassle it would be to stage a scene like this. Second, because I am also quite certain that if it were staged, the raw beauty of the moment would not be here. I found that whenever I wanted people to show up at a specific location, the photographs I took would end up looking quite dull. However, when people appeared in places where I did not expect them to be, I could usually capture more meaningful scenes. Somehow being out of control is, for me, the best way to capture touching moments.

After getting home, the final step was to carefully crop the photos in a way that would give life to their unpolished rawness. And by selecting and sequencing my photos for this book, I hope to share with readers the beauty that I witnessed.