CARITA SILANDER
  • LONDON ARCHIVE
    • about the archive
    • South of the Thames
    • North of the Thames
    • Square Mile and around
    • Lockdown Trails
    • Seen from the outside
    • The last photograph
    • The first photograph
    • For the love of Light
  • FAÇADES
    • a love song
  • Journal
  • about

LONDON
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ARCHIVE

LOCKDOWN TRAILS

Like most people in the UK, I descended, stunned by the suddenness it occurred, into lockdown in the end of March. The private view for the London Archive, the evening that I had worked towards for several months and the event that would have officially marked finishing that project, had to be postponed to the new, strange era into which we are yet to emerge. 

The state's response to the pandemic has widely been described with a language of war, the NHS staff being the soldiers fighting against in the invisible enemy in the battlefields that were the hospitals. This view was the starting point to the way I documented this unprecedented time, as an addition to the London Archive project. I walked, cycled and once took a bus to nearby hospitals during my daily outdoor exercise allowance, from Greenwich as well as in central London, and took photographs on the way, if and when I found them. 

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It was soon acknowledged as well that the workers from sectors deemed essential, and thus required to stay in duty during lockdown, such as refuse collectors and cleaners, are also doing the lowest-paid, least respected and most precarious jobs in the society. The London Archive also owes much to this sector. Every time I begin to compose a photograph, having, for example, noticed the light that falls on the pavement, it is thanks to the invisible daily work of the street sweeper without whom this city would be a dump. 
University College Hospital, NW1
Parliament House, SW1A
Nightingale Hospital, from Connaught Bridge, E16
Lea Bow Creek, E14
Millennium Mills, E16
Lea Bow Creek, E14
Nightingale Hospital London, E16
Nightingale Hospital London, E16
Nightingale Hospital London, E16
Charlton Cemetery, SE7
Woolwich Common, SE18
Queen Elisabeth Hospital, SE18
Well Hall Pleasaunce, SE9
Sidcup Place Garden, DA14
Lewisham University Hospital, SE13
Brookmill Park, SE8
Lewisham Parish Church of St Mary the Virgin, SE13
Lewisham, SE13
Lewisham, SE13
Lewisham, SE13
Blackfriars Station, EC4V
Piccadilly Circus, W1J
Leicester Square, WC2H
Paternoster Vents, EC4M
Upper Thames Street, EC4R
Temple Bar Gate, EC4M
Regent Street, W1B
BT Tower, W1T
Tooley Street, SE1
St Thomas Hospital, SE1
University College Hospital, NW1
Guy's Hospital, SE1
© Carita Silander
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  • LONDON ARCHIVE
    • about the archive
    • South of the Thames
    • North of the Thames
    • Square Mile and around
    • Lockdown Trails
    • Seen from the outside
    • The last photograph
    • The first photograph
    • For the love of Light
  • FAÇADES
    • a love song
  • Journal
  • about