I was roaming around the promenade, walking toward architect Ricardo Bofill's iconic "Hotel Vela" that so prominently dominates the skyline of Barcelona's city beach. On the hunt with a new lens on my camera, I was looking for interesting subjects in the throng of tourists, skateboarders, volleyball groups, squash courts, bachelor parties, and overtly stylish joggers along the all so busy Paseo Maritimo. The sun had passed its zenith, it was a typically hot day in August 2021 and the light, in it’s quality I do only from Barcelona, led me to the "Plaza Rosa de los Vientos", with its bright concrete stairs and the "Mirador del Mediterrani W", where the four square columns of "Las Quatro Barras de la Señera Catalana" twist towards the hazy, smoggy blue of the Mediterranean sky.

I noticed a group of young men who had creatively converted the architecture of the public space into their outdoor gym, sprinting up and down the concrete stairs, dripping with sweat in the Spanish heat. With the hill of Montjuïc, Barcelona's yacht and cargo port in the background, the overlapping layers of the city painted a great urban backdrop against a simultaneously imposing sky adorned by towering clouds to the west. I stopped for a moment to soak up the atmosphere when Hafid approached me and asked if I would take photos of the panting outfit. Nothing better than that, I thought, and was immediately welcomed with wide grins and open arms by the rest of the sopping group. Thus a series of pictures spontaneously emerged, with Essien as the main actor and personal trainer in the center, gathering the others around him, stretching their physical limits using sand-filled water canisters, large boulders or the bare elements of urban space given on site. His motto, which his silhouette most definitely reveals quite vividly: Never Give Up.

As the training session of the guys came to an end and I had also started to sweat, dashing after them on the hunt for photos, we exchanged contacts and I promised to send everyone a few photos as soon as possible. So it happened that barely two weeks later I returned a second time to the same place to shoot some more photos of Essien again. Unfortunately, we had no opportunities for further greater personal exchange, time flew by and everyone was busy with their lives. I would have loved to know more about the backgrounds and life stories of Essien, Hafid and Konate, the latter having become a father in the meantime.

The photos for "Never Give Up" are not staged or posed, but show how - through the lens of my camera - I observed what happened on the spot (with the exception of the group portrait, in which the guys are posing for the coolest picture).