Sometimes the most beautiful evenings begin without expectation. Just two friends wandering through East London with a camera, soft April light and the desire to feel present again. In this visual diary, Evie steps in front of the lens of photographer Adrienne Hicks, capturing the kind of fleeting magic that only appears when nobody is trying too hard.
words by Evie Ratna
“Living in London sometimes feels like moving in small circles inside a very big city. Most weeks blur into the same rotation of work, commuting, trying to reply to everyone properly, then collapsing into familiar forms of socialising that require very little from you. A drink at the pub. A coffee shop catch-up. Sitting in the park once the weather finally starts behaving again.
A few weeks ago, my friend Adrienne and I realised most of our catch-ups had quietly become exactly that. Comfortable, but passive. We are both creative girls in very different ways, but adulthood has a way of pushing those parts of yourself to the edges of your life. Something squeezed into whatever remains after work, admin and the ongoing challenge of becoming a functioning person.
Somewhere between voice notes and planning when to meet, we both landed on the same idea: instead of going for drinks, why not spend the evening doing an entirely aimless photoshoot around our local area in East London?
Adrienne works a corporate job, but photography has always been one of the clearest extensions of who she is. She arrived carrying her Fuji camera in one hand and a silver reflector in the other, immediately scanning streets and corners with a kind of quiet focus I had not seen from her in a while. Watching your friends inside the thing they naturally gravitate towards is strangely moving. She looked completely in her element.
“The older I get, the more I realise friendship is not only about emotional support or life updates.”
I had never really done anything like that before, but with Adrienne behind the camera it all felt strangely effortless. I wore a tartan kilt, knee-high boots I found abandoned on the side of the street last year, and a thrifted knit zip-up. Adrienne styled my hair into pigtails with little lace bows, which I would never usually wear, but weirdly they made me feel less self-conscious rather than more. Less concerned with looking composed all the time.
We wandered through hidden corners of local parks, quiet cobbled streets and council estates with beautiful tiled walls I had somehow stopped noticing despite walking past them for years. Golden hour in April has a very specific quality in London. Warm, but still crisp around the edges. Light bouncing off brick buildings and bus windows. For a few hours, our local area stopped feeling routine and started feeling cinematic.
There were awkward moments, of course. People staring while I attempted to pose outside random buildings. Teen boys hovering nearby probably wondering what exactly we thought we were doing. But because we were shooting in our own area, it never felt deeply embarrassing. More like briefly becoming part of the scenery of someone else’s evening.
At one point I tried photographing Adrienne instead and quickly realised how difficult photography actually is. My photos were genuinely awful. Crooked, badly framed, completely missing whatever instinct she naturally has for light and composition. It made me realise how often art looks effortless from the outside while actually requiring an enormous amount of attention underneath it.
“It reminded me how rare it now feels to do something simply for the sake of being fully present inside it.”
What stayed with me most was not really the photographs themselves, although I was excited to eventually see them once Adrienne had worked her editing magic. It was how we both felt afterwards. Energised in a way that felt different from normal socialising. Lighter.
After the shoot, we went to a small local wine bar where they serve surprise glasses chosen for you. The first one they brought us was an orange wine almost identical to the golden-hour light we had spent the evening inside. Sitting there, we found ourselves talking less about the photos themselves and more about how much we both missed making things without strategy or outcome attached to them.
There is something freeing about art without a real end goal. No audience in mind. No pressure for it to become content, money or self-improvement. Ironically, I sometimes think the outcome becomes better because of that.
As a writer, I knew almost immediately that I wanted to document the evening. Not because it needed to become anything bigger, but because it reminded me how rare it now feels to do something simply for the sake of being fully present inside it.
The older I get, the more I realise friendship is not only about emotional support or life updates. Sometimes it is about helping each other re-enter softer versions of ourselves. Versions untouched by deadlines, algorithms, networking or the pressure to constantly optimise our lives into something impressive.
For a few hours in East London, adulthood became playful again.”
model and words: Evie Ratna – www.instagram.com/revieatna @revieatna
photography by Adrienne Hicks www.instagram.com/adriennehicks_ @adriennehicks_
