In a year when policy, borders, and even algorithms seemed intent on keeping us apart, togetherness became a necessity. Throughout 2025, people found ways to gather – in packed-out barbershops, on strobing dance floors, and beneath the tents of raucous travelling circuses.

While the word “community” has been diluted, its meaning still lives in the act of showing up for one another. Many of the photo stories below trace communities forged under pressure – diasporic, queer, working-class, creative, and more. They document the spaces people occupy and the bonds they’ve built and sustained as the world buckles around them. From euphoric scenes of queer ravers on the Cretan shoreline to intimate portraits of international students in their halls of residence, each story is united by a shared sense of closeness.

As isolation increasingly defines modern life, these images remind us that intimacy is still practised — and, here, carefully documented. Below are ten photo stories from 2025 that capture what it looked like to stay close, even as everything else tried to pull us apart.

JOJO CAITLIN, THE PALACE COLLECTIVE

Tucked beneath the railway tracks at Jannowitzbrücke in a derelict office building slated for demolition lives the Berlin-based grassroots art group The Palace Collective. Born from disillusionment with the city’s artistic and political institutions, the collective escapes each year to a 16th-century palace in Poland. Here, the creatives come together backdropped by crumbling ruins and rolling woodlands and documented through the lens of Scottish-German photographer Jojo Caitlin.

Read the full story here on Dazed.

DANI D'INGEO, NATURE LOVES COURAGE

While much of queer hedonism thrives in sweaty basements and hidden clubs, photographer Dani D’ingeo turns their gaze to a brighter corner: Nature Loves Courage, a festival in the tiny Cretan village of Sougia. Here, they capture queer partygoers drifting between the pebbled shoreline and the open-air dancefloor, gathering as the sun sets.

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MARIA CLARA MACRÌ, HOLY SCIÒ

Shot among lively family kitchens, sunlit balconies, and romanesque apartments, Holy Sciò captures Naples’ youth navigating life in an ancient city. Italian photographer Maria Clara Macrì drifts through its streets, documenting young creatives, many from elsewhere, as they carve out their own space in Napoli.

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SPYROS RENNT, INTERTWINED

Against the backdrop of rising costs, commercialisation, and the pandemic’s disruption of nightlife, Intertwined documents the softer forms of connection that keep dance floors alive. Here, Berlin-based photographer Spyros Rennt shifts focus from the usual chaos of basement raves to the tender exchanges that unfold in these spaces – locking eyes with strangers, embracing friends, and colliding in sticky, ecstatic bodies as one.

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EZEKIEL, SOMEWHERE BETWEEN A DOG AND A DOLL

Shot across the globe, Somewhere Between a Dog and a Doll charts the fluidity of transness and the complexities of masculinity through intimate, diaristic snapshots. Photographer Ezekiel moves between cluttered bedrooms, post-rave streets, protests, and landscapes from the UK to Europe, the US, and the Philippines, capturing the intricacies of gender and masculinity outside of the Western binary.

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VICTORIA GILL, MELANIE & THE MINERS’ STRIKE

Melanie & the Miners’ Strike shows an alternate narrative of the North of England in the mid-80s, highlighting a working-class youth culture defined by connection as an overwhelming force rather than deprivation. The series was pieced together from photographs discovered by artist Victoria Gill, documenting her mum’s life. Here, moments between friends in pubs and gaudy living rooms capture the timeless persistence of community.

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KAISHUI YIKAI LIU, BETWEEN YOUR EYES AND MINE

Between Your Eyes and Mine captures intimate portraits of London’s international students in their rooms. Photographer Kaishui Yikai Liu began the project as a way to navigate the isolation and uncertainty of studying far from home, documenting peers who, like him, negotiate multiple identities in a foreign city. The series follows the students, alone or in pairs, sprawled across mattresses or gazing out of windows as they each inhabit their own private worlds, yet remain bound together by a shared diasporic isolation.

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IMOGEN, BONANZA QUEER RODEO

From scenes of dance floor elation to romantic trysts and rapt audiences, photographer Imogen documents the devoted crowd at London’s queer rodeo night, Bonanza, at south London’s Cock Tavern. Between cowboy hats, chaps, and excessive fringing, the series takes the viewer inside the beloved night that regularly sells out – even when taking place midweek.

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NADIA KRAWIECKA, MAQUININHA DU CORTE

At the heart of Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro’s largest favela, is the barbershop of Peterson Oliveira de Santos, known locally as Maquininha du Corte. The shop draws the community from across the neighbourhood for its distinctive bleached-dot carioca cuts. Over several months, photographer Nadia Krawiecka immersed herself in the space, documenting the rhythms of the shop and the people who gather there.

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KEIRAN PERRY, SMOKE FILLED MIRROR

Smoke Filled Mirror documents two years with a travelling circus in the north of England. Photographer Keiran Perry first stumbled upon the community in Morecambe after the pandemic, and over the following years he followed them as the circus toured England and Scotland, capturing performers who doubled as cooks, mechanics, and aerial artists. From wild trapeze acts to huddles of caravans and quieter backstage moments, this photo series captures the bonds that came to sustain a nomadic community.

Read the full article here on Dazed.