I realised I had to be much more selective. There was
a lot of backwards and forwards with each person.
I asked them to send me pictures of what they, or
whoever would be in the photograph, looked like,
and what the front window of their house looked like.
Once we’d decided to go ahead with the shoot,
I would then ‘recce’ their home and find a suitable
window that I thought was interesting. There were
a lot of emails backwards and forwards about their
clothing. In the end I realised that if I brought in some
vintage clothing I bought online and sent it straight
to their homes, they could then put it on. There
was a lot of that – it wasn’t just turning up.
The whole thing was quite staged, which is totally
my way of working. Even though they’re real people in
their homes, they’re still very staged in that I’m telling
them what to wear, and I’m asking if they want a pet
in the photograph. What is their hobby? What do
they typically do in lockdown?Did you plot the photo shoots out? How long
did a typical shoot last?
I’d absolutely plot it out and give myself time. With my
advertising and personal fine-art work, I always work
with a large crew of people, but suddenly I was on
my own. After doing two or three shoots on my
own, I persuaded my then 12-year-old son Finn
to help me carry the lighting, because I still
wanted to stick with my style of photography.
I prioritised shooting at twilight, when it was getting
darker, so that the ambient light would kind of engulfseeing people wearing masks. I would just randomly
stop people and ask if I could photograph them, but
the style of photography felt very photojournalistic.
When I was on one of my permitted walks –
you could only go out for one hour in your local
neighbourhood – I noticed people looking forlornly
out of their windows. I felt it was like we were all kind
of trapped behind these windows, like we were caged
in a zoo, and we couldn’t escape or go out. I felt that
was quite an interesting metaphor on how to capture
our lockdown and what we were all going through.
When you see a scene of shooting through a
window, it’s like the window is framing the person,
and I thought that was really interesting. It’s nearly
like a picture within a picture, so I was drawn to that.
Within two or three weeks of lockdown, I decided
to photograph people through windows.
I put an ad on our local social media and in a
newsletter in West London. Many people were now
suddenly at home and had more time on their hands,
so I had quite a high response to these ads. To begin
with, I photographed nearly everybody – I was just
happy to photograph people. But within a few days,“ I felt it was like we were all kind
of trapped behind these windows,
like we were caged in a zoo”
Above: Alice, Lockdown
Day 76.Julia Fullerton-Batten
Julia Fullerton-Batten122 DIGITAL CAMERA^ FEBRUARY 2022 http://www.digitalcameraworld.com