These photos celebrate friendship over romantic love

On a long walk in a park near New York City’s Soho, the photographer Rafael Martinez pulled out his camera and began, with no immediate purpose, to take photographs of his beloved friend, model and filmmaker Aheem Sosa. This is a familiar scene; ever since the camera became more portable, taking pictures of a loved one has become customary. To poorly paraphrase writer and critic Susan Sontag, photography has become a social practice that serves as a way to memorialise our lives and provide tangible proof of the love we share. For Martinez, taking the first few photographs of the stylishly dressed Sosa, with his leather jacket zipped high, was similarly a natural impulse, but one that, through repeated spontaneous photo shoots, evolved into a year-long photographic meditation on friendship, intimacy, migration and belonging.

“Everything started there at that park,” Martinez tells Dazed of his self-published zine Aheem by Rafael. We didn’t really expect anything concrete to come from those sessions, but we knew we enjoyed sharing the image-making process. After that session, it became sort of a ritual to walk around and take photographs of each other. Sometimes we would have real, honest conversations about our cultural backgrounds in Nigeria and Mexico, as well as talking about friendships and our love lives. But other times we were just being silly or grabbing food.” As Martinez continued taking these photographs, he began seeing them as documents of his friendship with Sosa. “It is the story of a friendship and the trust and intimacy we share. But equally, it’s a story of how time is fleeting and the beauty of the everyday and to cherish who you get to share that everyday with.”

As the photographer recounts, time is a central factor of the project, which was taken across the four changing seasons in New York. In some photographs, the harsh summer sun shines across Sosa’s face, leaving him tonally exposed in the black-and-white images, while in others, he stands in a snow-covered park, bundled up in knits and thick wool scarves. “In the way the light catches Aheem, you can feel the softness of the winter sun transition to the strong contrast of summer light. We watch as Aheem’s wardrobe transitions from light cotton tank tops to jackets, and how the environment in the image tells the story of how time passes each year and how that passing of time is something we all share.” 

For both Martinez and Sosa, this project was bittersweet, as it marked Sosa’s move from New York to London. “It is so beautiful to see your friends dream big and move to different cities, but also very sad. We will definitely see each other again, but perhaps we won’t live in the same city or have the chance to work on a project like this again, which is why this zine feels even more special. When we were done with the project and he was helping me with the final edit, which was also the last time we saw each other, it felt like the end of a very unique chapter in our friendship that we got to capture and now put out in the world for people to look at and find comfort in.” 

Martinez sees this zine as a collaborative effort, one in which his subject was an active participant in shaping the project’s narrative. Most significantly, he shares how Sosa rented out a dance studio and asked him to come with him to photograph him performing. “I had nothing to do with those photographs in the studio; it was all Aheem’s idea. He is not a professional dancer, but I’ve never experienced anything like that. I felt as though he was being truly vulnerable dancing in front of me and the camera,” Martinez reflects. “I feel like those are the moments where true intimacy is nurtured, when someone is putting their body and soul out there in the open, and you're photographing it. That moment felt really special.” 

The images of Sosa dancing in a sparse dance studio close out the zine, and as Martinez explains, these were the last photographs he took of Sosa for this project. “It felt like a transformative moment that defined to me, at least, what the project was trying to capture, which was how intimate and vulnerable friendships are,” he explains. Friendship to Martinez is just as important as romantic love, and this project, he emphatically states, is a testament to that. “When I moved to New York from Tijuana, I didn’t know anyone or have any notion of how to navigate a city that didn’t speak the same language as me. I have been lucky enough to find a group of friends who have nurtured me every day. This is a love letter to all those friends, including Aheem, who have shown me that intimacy goes beyond romance. It is a moment of connection and sharing that happens in our everyday lives, whether you’re hungover and chilling in bed, watching television, or getting ready to go out.” 

Aheem by Rafael is available here now.