The Space He Occupied

I was touring Granada when I saw this man sitting on the pavement drawing. What caught my attention was the scale of what he was doing. He wasn't working in a sketchbook. He had spread a large piece of cardboard across the ground and was building an architectural drawing directly on it.

I photographed him from behind and continued on. I never spoke with him, and I knew nothing about him. After that trip, the photograph remained among my RAW files from 2014 and I didn't return to it for more than twelve years.

When I finally looked at it again, I noticed something I had completely missed when I made the photograph: writing along the edge of the cardboard. Among it was a reference to The Lost Photographer.

I followed it.

The artist was John Haydn Colley. His site was still there, and because I knew exactly when I had made the photograph — April 8, 2014 — I went into his archive looking for that period. There I found his writing from Granada. On April 7, the day before my photograph, he wrote about leaving the city after being fined €150 for what he described as "occupation of a public space" while working as an artist.

That discovery changed the photograph for me.

Then I discovered something I was not prepared for. John had died several years after I photographed him.

I had never spoken to this man. He never knew that I made this photograph, and until now I didn't even know his name. Yet suddenly I wasn't simply looking at an unknown street artist from one of my travels. I knew who he was. I had read his words. I had seen his work. And I knew that he was no longer here.

I understand his frustration in Granada differently now. As an artist myself, I understand wanting the freedom simply to make something and share it with the people around you.

I want his own work to remain part of this record. That is why the Studio maintains a link to The Lost Photographer. It is my small gesture of solidarity from one artist to another.

The photograph didn't change. What I was able to see in it did.

The composition places John Haydn Colley low within the public plaza, his seated body anchoring the left side of the frame while the long sheet of cardboard extends horizontally across the pavement. His posture, arm and hand direct the eye immediately toward the drawing, creating a visual connection between artist and work.

Around him are the ordinary materials of a working artist: bags, clothing, loose drawings and the improvised surface on which he works. Pedestrians continue through the upper portion of the frame, establishing a quiet contrast between movement and concentration. Colley has stopped; the city continues around him.

The broad horizontal format reinforces the physical territory occupied by the drawing. Yet even with the cardboard, belongings and artist spread across the pavement, they consume only a modest portion of the surrounding public space. That spatial relationship takes on additional meaning when considered alongside Colley's contemporaneous account of being fined for the "occupation of a public space."

The title therefore operates both literally and retrospectively. The space Colley occupied was physical, temporary and relatively small. What survived from his presence there — the drawing, his writing and this photograph — extends far beyond it.

A photograph can contain information its maker does not yet understand.

At the moment of exposure, the photographer sees only what circumstances allow him to see: a man, a drawing, a public square, an act of concentration. But photographs preserve relationships, inscriptions and evidence that can remain dormant until someone returns and looks again.

Here, a small piece of writing along the edge of a sheet of cardboard survived inside the frame for more than twelve years. It became a path from image to identity, from identity to another artist's words, and ultimately from an anonymous encounter to the recognition of a life.

There is also a question of what it means for an artist to occupy public space. Cities are experienced not only through their monuments and architecture but through the people who temporarily transform their streets — musicians, painters, performers, photographers and those who stop to watch them.

Colley's physical occupation of this particular space was temporary. The evidence of his presence was not.

His drawings survived. His words survived. His online archive survived. And without either man knowing it at the time, a photograph survived.

The space an artist occupies may be physically small. What remains from having occupied it can be considerably larger.

The Space He Occupied is preserved within the Francisco Colón Studio Photography Wing as both a documentary street photograph and an example of retrospective photographic discovery.

The original RAW file establishes the photograph in Granada on April 8, 2014. More than twelve years later, details retained within that file allowed Francisco Colón to identify the previously unknown artist as John Haydn Colley (1967–2019) and connect the photograph with Colley's contemporaneous writings at The Lost Photographer.

During that research, Colón discovered a public notice reporting that John Haydn Colley died on May 11, 2019, at IPO Hospital in Lisbon, Portugal. Because the Studio has not located an independent death record or obituary confirming those particulars, the date and place of death are preserved here with that qualification.

Colley's blog, The Lost Photographer, remains online. Francisco Colón Studio preserves a direct link to that archive in recognition of the artist depicted here and in solidarity from one artist to another.

Colley speaks for himself there. His drawings, photographs, travels, frustrations and observations remain in his own words.

In Granada on April 8, 2014, their paths crossed without introduction. John Haydn Colley was making a drawing. Francisco Colón made a photograph. Neither man knew that more than twelve years later the photograph would lead one artist back to the identity, words and surviving archive of the other.

Artist Archive — John Haydn Colley (1967–2019) The Lost Photographer https://thelostphotographer.blogspot.com/

This external archive is maintained independently of Francisco Colón Studio.