These photos capture the ‘optimistic nihilism’ of young people today

Born into an age marred by political disillusionment and declining prospects for young people, 22-year-old photographer Saffron McLeod and her friends are already worn-out. “We’re struggling and it’s not our fault,” she tells Dazed. “It’s down to the housing crisis, the climate crisis and the invention of social media, among other things.” It is in this context that they planned their brief escape from the city, and the photos that emerged speak to their bittersweet longing for a simpler life. 

“We were at a dance festival in Portugal,” McLeod says of her new photo series In Debt, In Doubt, In Dance. “A couple of friends were DJing and we came to support. It was the perfect escape, disrupting the mundanity of everyday life and nine-to-five jobs.” From lounging at the beach to explosive energy releases on the dancefloor and the quiet moments of clarity in the early hours that followed, the series captures McLeod’s cohort working through their stresses in real time. 

For McLeod, the pressures of contemporary society are felt more acutely by young people now, more than any generation before them. Yet their struggles are often trivialised. “An opinion I hear from older generations is that we should be way tougher because ‘back in my day no one complained, we just got on with it,’” she says. “It perpetuates the idea that the current issues faced by young people are as a result of the failings of the individual as opposed to a result of systemic and structural failures.”

“Boomers often fail to acknowledge that they were born during a ‘boom’ of economic and social growth,” McLeod continues, “nowadays, it’s much harder to be resilient when it’s almost impossible to even conceptualise your long-term goals and dreams, let alone materialise them. I feel that there’s a very real response of collective paralysis when you’re pressured by a cost of living crisis and vicious cycles of debt”.

These photos, however, find solace in a philosophy McLeod terms ‘optimistic nihilism’, capturing the rollercoaster of hedonism and pessimism that permeated their holiday. “Optimistic nihilism is about reclaiming a life lacking purpose as a skint, lost 20-something-year-old and creating your own,” she explains. “It’s a fundamentally freeing approach to life, the term really resonates with me.” 

It’s fitting, then, that it is the most emotionally conflicted moments of In Debt, In Doubt, In Dance that sit especially close to McLeod’s heart. One image in particular features one of McLeod’s friends resting on another’s knees as the sun beams behind them, their eyes glazed over and their expression distant. It’s a powerful contrast.  “Those images were all taken in the morning on roll throughs after nights of partying,” she recounts. “Everyone gets more existential in the early hours and I’m drawn to photographing those fleeting moments of reflection and vulnerability, they carve out an intimacy in a world [with a] lack of it.”

For many young people today, looking forward to the future is tough, but McLeod found a kernel of hope on the shores of Portugal. “With so much pain and oppression coming from all angles from elitist powers, pockets of culture and community sprout underground,” she explains, “there’s a lot of strength in more quiet forms of revolution, such as creating communal spaces for art, dance and music. That’s the most instinctive and important way to resist the conventional, establishmentarian principles of a contemporary society that does us no favours”.

Check the gallery above for McLeod’s full photo series.