2020 Vision - how I saw the year.

Red Alert.
Soho, London. Sept 2020.

Not that anyone should be able to predict the contents of their Christmas stocking, but when this year began I would never have foreseen that Santa would be leaving, not one but, two face masks. Just one marker of what a strange year this has been.

And, of course, it is all reflected in the images I have taken too; the number of images, the location and the style and the genres captured. Or, perhaps to put it more accurately, in the images I haven’t taken.

 January saw several photo walks, both solo and accompanied around favourite London haunts – the world was seemingly unfolding as it should. Soho, the West End, the South Bank, the City and Columbia Road flower market were all exhibiting the old normal; while rumours of the far away virus caused few visible ripples. Things are never as bad as they seem.

The end of February saw me shooting in London with trepidation nibbling away at me but not enough to stop me. As I returned home I did wonder how long it would be before I returned.

One Last Time.
Paternoster Square, London. Feb 2020.

Lockdown, when it came at the end of March, seemed late. Other countries were ahead and we didn’t seem to be reading the signs – football and race meetings carrying on defiantly in a weird echo of the Blitz spirit but against an invisible enemy that wanted us to do just that. I had no idea when I would be able to reclaim my London streets from this undetectable foe. 

Only essential travel was permitted. Not being a “real” photographer – someone who could make a living from photography- I could hardly claim it was essential for me to be out and about in the capital. Yet I felt that history was being made on those empty streets and that it was running away from me.

I also needed to shoot. It’s what I do. It completes me. Balances everything else. Gives me an escape. Perhaps I am an escape artist.

I also knew enough to know I didn’t (and don’t) want this virus; thank you. 

So, as we got used to the new normal, social distancing and a distinct lack of toilet paper, so the number of photos taken dropped off sharply. Street photography where I live is a real challenge for me, as I have described in other blogs. Too many people know me. And it’s very hard to see home streets objectively. When I did go out, my camera still came with me but it was just in case”, rather than with any real sense of intent or expectation.

Increasingly, I found I was taking photos on my early morning or evening dog walks. I began keeping the camera in my hand instead of in a bag – ready. I started enjoying the walks more. I slowed down., looked around, noticing the subtle changes as spring bloomed around me and melted into a hot summer. Miraculously, lockdown weather was incredible and everyone took themselves outside to live their lives. It was as if nature was compensating.

Sweetwater, Witley, Surrey.
June 2020.

As we got used to the “new normal” and the world realised that life would have to continue to enable market forces to regain the upper hand, it began to feel safer to emerge from this bizarre hibernation. After one tentative afternoon scoping the outlying Battersea and Chelsea on foot, I finally made it back into the heart of the city at the beginning of July.

London was finally allowed to reopen its pubs, which it did in a characteristically crazed Saturday night – all or nothing, seemingly – on the 4th of July. The Independence Day coincidence was not lost. The next morning, a beautiful summer Sunday, I returned for the first time in over four months. It was incredibly quiet (see Post-Lockdown London). Sure enough, it delivered the empty streets and squares that I’d been so keen to document and was worried I’d missed. It also displayed all the paraphernalia of Covid Life – hand sanitisers on street corners and in station concourses, painted footprints strategically distanced; Thank You NHS signs and graffiti. I sat in my first café for months; all alone with a double espresso and an anxious frown on some side street in Soho. But at least I was back.

The Only Living Boy In Soho.
Soho, London. July 2020.

What turned out to be a long hot summer didn’t pass me by but afforded me a few days walking and shooting shadows along the South Bank and up into the City. It felt good to be keeping my hand in and to feel that I wasn’t losing my mojo.

A week’s holiday in Wales kept my camera firmly in reach for some coastal images – both candid, public shots and stormy sky-ed landscapes. It even had me thinking about tripods and filters - briefly.

Aberarth, Wales.
August 2020.

The autumn term (I’m a Headteacher when I’m not doing the street photographer impersonation) usually sees me taking in a few London evenings and weekends. However, as we neared what became Lockdown II in November and, then the introduction of Tiers in December and even tighter restrictions again over Christmas, I have almost entirely stayed away.

In the UK, the vaccine has started to roll out. Over 500 000 of the eldest vaccinated so far. It’s going to take a while to have an impact. And, in the meantime, new more virulent strains of the virus are making their presence felt. But 2021 does hold hope, certainly in the longer term. For now, I guess I’ll be reaching for that wide angle lens, walking boots and maybe even a tripod and a filter or two.

Night Grind.
Soho, London. Dec 2020.