I found myself thinking about some past summers and winters in London. Some scenes I photographed stayed with me because they come from moments when more extreme weather conditions could make you look twice before you immediately recognise something as “London.” This photograph, for example, comes from a winter moment with enough snow to hide a lot of “London” detail.
Because snow in London is mostly just a dusting of it when it happens, it typically produces only a partial change in how the city looks. It never becomes the stark minimalism of high contrast light and shadow. The city is not really prepared for snow. Winters are more about wet pavements, reflections, overcast skies, and days when the city lighting only stays off for a few hours each day.
The winter of 2022 to 2023 was different, with enough snow to be memorable, even though it was brief.
I was in Clapton Common, in the Stamford Hill area of North London, a few days before Christmas 2022. One of my clients has an office nearby, and I pass through that spot regularly.
On that day, the common appeared almost monochrome. This reduction did not make the space appear simpler. Structure began to assert itself more clearly. Some edges appeared more distinctly. At the same time, the blanket of snow dampened movement. All sounds were muffled.
Minor irregularities in the snow coverage remained. Only one side of the trees and branches had been covered in snow, with the dark bark clearly beside it.
And yet, the snow was enough that I felt as though the place had briefly shifted into something else. The usual markers that give you immediate geographic identity (e.g. red post-boxes, the type of fencing used in London, the direction of traffic) seemed to have fallen away. At first sight, it could be elsewhere. I thought the boxy blocks of flats in the distance could make the common appear as a courtyard like those you could encounter in many towns and cities of Central Europe.
Perhaps photography here operates not just as a record of snow, but as a way of finding readability again where those London markers have temporarily been covered.
This photograph forms one half of a pair of “one shot stories” that look at how the city becomes readable under different kinds of visual pressure. In the other picture, it is a scene under the heat of summer.
The photograph was taken with a Fujifilm X-E2 and a Fujinon 18–55mm f/2.8–4 lens.
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