That was the last time we saw each other. I was just wrapping up my London era, and photography was put aside for a while. A few years later, vivo.sk – the photo server where we originally crossed paths – shut down, and I might be wrong, but maybe that's when he stopped shooting too. When I tried looking him up online a while later, I found nothing but dead links. From an era when people still shot on "proper digital SLRs," mobiles were just for making phone calls, and analogue purists kept explaining to us that a real photo couldn't exist without film. It’s as if he vanished, remaining forever in his Noikosphere. I still have that lens today. Despite the cracked plastic, it works just as well as it did back then on that foggy, empty coast. I just seem to lack places with the right atmosphere to make it worth taking off the shelf again. I’ve traveled and shot a lot, but there are few places where this effect fits without feeling forced. I tried selling it a couple of times to no avail; it seems no one is after this type of dreamy blur anymore. The world has become too ordinary, and everything flows by pointlessly fast. I think I’ll keep it and tuck it away. For our next meeting with Noik. I still have that book of Hopper's paintings, too, which I bought for him before leaving England and planned to give to him. There was a great line in a TV show once – about how wonderful it would be to know you're currently living in the good old days before you actually leave them behind for good. My time with Noik was only a brief sojourn; we only saw each other then and twice before, but our morning shoot was exactly one of those photo-moments. It’s a pity I didn't know it then.

Drifting through Noikosmos #12, 2011