showing an image. Then I started entering images
into competitions and they were very well-received –
they would either win or be a runner-up.
I felt that I wanted something for people to hold
and to be able to look through pages, rather than just
looking at the images on a screen. I’m hoping that,
in years to come, we’ll forget about this pandemic- but who knows? – and reflect back on the time
that we all went through, and be able to hold
this piece of artwork in book form.
At the back of the book, you can see a thumbnail
of the images and simple captions by each individual
person. I interviewed them, and they wrote a lot
of text, but narrowed it down to the most
interesting text and kept it quite short.
How did the Kickstarter campaign for the book go?
I reached my target within 10 days – that was quite
fast, and was a lovely feeling. We only had a month
to raise £17,000, which is a very daunting thought,
but it happened. I found that offering limited-edition
prints also helped to create interest.Did you work within a certain radius from your
home in West London?
It was mostly in Chiswick, and I’d also go to Barnes.
I went through a phase of having a pre-prepared
letter, so when I went on long walks with my family
and I saw something that was interesting or unique,
maybe a window or a house, although I had no idea
of what the people behind it were like, I would post
letters through peoples’ letterboxes. That wasn’t so
successful because they didn’t know me, and I was
only contacting them because of their homes. Aslockdown eased, I did a call-out over Instagram
saying, “Anybody in London who wants to be
photographed?” Then I started getting in the car
with my assistants, and we started driving to specific
places, so it reached further out around London.How did you light these shoots?
It was shot with Profoto B10 portable lights that
I triggered off a radio slave from my camera. This also
meant I was able, when lockdown eased, to actually
give the person I was photographing a light or two
that they could put on a stand in their homes – then
I was able to remote control the stops that I was
going up and down from my trigger outside.
The B10s are light and easy to handle, and you
put them on a stand. For light shaping, I worked
with different kinds of grids that can make light
quite spotted, or softboxes.What are you looking to convey in these images?
I wanted to record this period of time for posterity...
what we all went through not only in the UK, but as
a nation. It feels like our whole world has changed
since then, but I don’t want people to look at the
images and feel sadness. I want people to almost
feel gratitude for how everybody pulled together
in this... how families reunited, sticking closer
together because everybody was now stuck
at home when normally everybody’s out
and about doing their own thing.
It’s more of a reflection of a strange time we
all went through, and what positivity came from it.
Apart from that, it’s for photography lovers
who just enjoy my creations.The book Looking Out
From Within is self-
published by Julia
Fullerton-Batten
(ISBN: 978-1-3999-
0872-6), £45/$60.
http://www.juliafullerton-
batten.comAbove: Tweedy, Lockdown
Day 472.Julia Fullerton-Batten124 DIGITAL CAMERA^ FEBRUARY 2022 http://www.digitalcameraworld.com