Nima Bank was meant to be on the plane soaring overhead in this image. Unfortunately, he had been daydreaming in Istanbul airport, enjoying a coffee, and lost track of time. Once he realised his error, and that he would be stranded in the airport for the rest of the day, he says, “I found myself contemplating how a single missed connection could alter a life’s entire trajectory. What new possibilities had this delay set in motion? Was it a loss, or a redirection toward something else?”
The film-maker and photographer, originally from Iran, now living in Turkey, adds, “When the very plane I should have been on passed above me, it felt symbolic; like a reminder that movement, pause and change are all part of the journey.”
Bank captured the moment on his phone, then whiled away an hour of his newly empty day by editing the shot with the Snapseed and Juxtaposer apps. “I wanted to shape what I felt, rather than merely what I saw, so I amplified the size of the aircraft and its reflection,” he says. “The distortions visually echo the sense of being left behind and caught between different layers of reality.”
A decade later, Bank says the image makes him question how much weight we should give to moments of setback. “Do we mourn them, or do we embrace them as hidden opportunities?”