London Lockdown

On the 20th March, 2020, soon after my return from a long American trip, the UK was put into lockdown to try to control the pandemic, and I felt I had to somehow document this moment in history. I got on my bike as the announcement was made and started photographing the rapidly emptying city. Already it seems like another time, but I remember how scared and unprepared we all were for how our lives would change literally overnight. I had my press card which I meant I shouldn’t get harassed by the police (though I was never challenged and rarely saw any police throughout the lockdown) and headed Trafalgar Square, the geographical centre of London. The square was largely empty at 4pm, the hour of lockdown, with just a scattering of homeless people not quite knowing what to do, their source of daily income having evaporated overnight. I realized that it was important to photograph London over the lockdown period. It was in a historically unique position, especially the West End and the City which quickly had become deserted. I had the possibility of seeing for the first time my city as it was when the streets were first planned and built. Strangely over the whole period the shop lights were left on. I will never forget standing in a deserted Piccadilly circus at 7.30 pm on a Saturday night, Eros framed by Nash’s spectacular buildings spreading along Regent Street, all lit by the changing colours by the enormous LED adverting hoardings and without the throngs of tourists and theatre goers. To be honest I felt excited and privileged, as if entering the proscenium arch of an empty theatre set, lit especially for me! My daily rides became surreal journeys. I became like an actor in a strange silent film. Streets were empty but filled with the ghosts of crowds. Traffic and pollution had disappeared, and, in this silence, I ‘saw’ the city’s splendour, unencumbered, for the first time. I had the freedom of cycling down carless streets without the noise and danger of traffic jams with pedestrians on their mobiles walking straight out in front of you. I remember chatting with the only 2 people on Oxford Circus, a homeless man and a bus inspector interrupted only by the occasional passing buses with no passengers, the drivers dressed in homemade PPE with only a plastic curtain for protection.