Between concrete and stone, sweating blood and tears under the Barcelona sun Essien trains others to never give up: This series of photographs by Essien, Hafid and Konate came about spontaneously through a chance encounter while walking through Catalonia's capital, Barcelona. For me it is representative of the kind of encounters that photography allows me to have, and thus of true personal value.

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.