London Light – New Photo Book

One of the things that has always surprised me about London is how it only takes a tiny change in the light to turn it from dreary gray city to a mysteriously shining metropolis, or to make its buildings blaze with colour.  Sunrise along the Thames, or dew shining on the grass in Regents Park, transform it totally.

The Thames barrier shining in the sunlight

Sandra Lousada’s book of photographs, London Light, takes this as its theme, and it shows London as we rarely see it. Many of the photos were taken late at night, or very early in the morning, so that we only see the lights – red traffic lights and the tail lights of a taxi in a gray mist, or the blue lights of an underpass.

Some of the work approaches the status of Impressionist painting; these aren’t photographs which show us objects or buildings, but which create a feeling or a mood. There’s one marvelous picture of a duck, pin-sharp, in a host of swirling golden reflections – it’s almost like a Klimt painting, where the pattern takes over from reality. There’s even a picture of willows in Viaduct Pond which is almost a Monet.

The Albert Bridge, dressed up like a Christmas tree

Quite a few of the photos are taken with a long, hand-held exposure, creating a heavily blurred image. Lousada is a very experienced photographer – she’s worked as a portrait photographer, and in the theatre, in fashion and advertising -  so this is a positive choice, not a technical shortcoming,  and it leads to some marvelous effects; for instance, there’s a picture of the top of Tower 42 (which used to be known as the NatWest Tower) in which the zoom has been used to create the blur, making the lines of light rush in towards the middle of the picture. The Bond Street Christmas lights create an effect like the links of chain mail, while light trails in Burlington Gardens looks like Chinese calligraphy. These are wonderfully poetic images.

St Paul's painted in light

People are often wraiths – reflected in glass or water, blurred by movement – so that this London seems peopled by gray ghosts. Sometimes we see familiar icons in a very different light – a red bus’s side becomes a collage of street scene reflected in its shiny paint.

The whole city sometimes seems softened by the long exposure or by the low light; Harrods in the rain becomes smoky and mysterious, and clouds temper the hard outlines of glass and metal.  Even graffiti becomes mysterious in low light.

Reflections are another focus of Sandra Lousada’s lens. I particularly enjoyed the pictures of curving reflections like oil spreading in water, caught against the straight grid of the buildings at Canary Wharf; it looks almost like a Mondrian painting.

Traffic light trails define the junction at Bank, in the City

Patterns come out very strongly in this book; modern architecture in particular contributes some fine patterns, but there are also reflections in water, and the patterns made by fountains frozen in time. One photo of the London Eye shows a series of tiny white flecks like meteors falling through the sky; a fountain at the Festival Hall makes a fine cross-hatching like a mezzotint or steel engraving.

Some of the colours are superb. There’s a wonderful gray, grainy London, but there’s also the electric blue of modern lighting, the bright sharpness of lasers, and the shining pale blues of the Thames Barrier. There’s a mysterious green tinge to the silver birch trees at Tate Modern, and the bright red of the OXO on the Oxo Tower.

Red lights are the only colour in the monochrome cityscape

This isn’t a faked-up Heritage London, nor a tribute to the Cool Britannia years – Sandra Lousada captures the bleakness of a winter day at Paddington just as convincingly as the summer freshness of the Regents Canal. But if I had to characterize this book, I’d say that it brings to the fore the romance of London – and in particular, the romance and mystery of the pea-souper, the great London fog. This is a London that is mysterious and crepuscular, that hides secrets – it’s the London that Turner and Whistler imagined in oil, and that Sandra Lousada has now painted with digital light.

The Big Red Bus, but not as we know it

I think if there is one book on London that I’d have on my Christmas list this year, it would be this one. It has inspired me to take a fresh look at places I thought I knew well, both as a Londoner and as a photographer.

It’s a really well produced book, too – the printing quality is superb, and for photo geeks there’s a full rundown on the lenses and exposures used at the back of the book.

Photos are taken from London Light by Sandra Lousada, published at £25 by Frances Lincoln (www.franceslincoln.com).