We live in an age of constant movement toward places where things happen, where life feels denser. And then, once we arrive, we find ourselves alone in the middle of everyone else. That contradiction is at the heart of Alone, Together, the project by photographer Francesco Legnani.

Francesco Legnani began photographing in 2019, during a solo trip to Iceland. Waterfalls and volcanoes soon gave way to something harder to frame: cities, streets, people. The project grew out of years of shooting across Beijing, Seoul, Istanbul, Marrakech and Zurich, and from a scene that repeats itself everywhere, regardless of latitude. People who choose to be near each other without necessarily speaking, who seek the presence of others without seeking contact.

The photographs of Alone, Together are defined by their vivid colour palette — a deliberate choice, not a purely aesthetic one. For Legnani, colour carries emotion, and these moments of silent coexistence are full of it. The city is always beautiful, luminous, in motion, even when its inhabitants seem lost in their screens or their thoughts. In Seoul, three girls holding their phones in the same night alley. In Zurich, two silhouettes behind the fogged glass of a train. In Beijing, red silhouettes that never touch. In Marrakech, bodies lit alone against the dark.