And so endeth MYLSBN – which ,for the record, has nothing to do with lesbians contrary to what some might think (yes Tennyson crew, I am talking about you!). The shots over the last few weeks were designed to give you a virtual trip to Lisbon during this lockdown. A way to travel without moving. This pandemic has given our species a golden opportunity to show how we can live differently to how we lived before.
And now that we have been brought to a standstill we can hopefully see we are at a junction in the road. The path we were on was a dead end and we knew it but we couldn’t envisage an alternative. But now we have been given a glimpse of what life would be like if all unnecessary travel and excessive consumerism and relentless pollution stopped. And as restrictive as it it is, life carries on.
We can now see a different path because we are effectively on it. Already emissions have dropped all over the globe and it has been proven we can completely change the way we live almost overnight. Those that opposed change convinced us it wasn’t possible but the response to Corona across the globe has proven otherwise. Let’s use this devastating and destructive virus to save mankind by halting the rise in global temperatures and preserving the goldilocks zone on this planet that allows us and most other species to live upon it.
I know it maybe seemed strange that I was showing you photographs of a former visit to Lisbon as the world went into meltdown but it was designed to serve as a form of escapism from the relentless feed of horror. I realised very early on that it was crucial for us to have breaks from this thing to preserve our sanity. I enjoyed being elsewhere whilst I worked on the pictures and yet, inevitably, they always brought me back to the current situation and all my articles have revolved around the virus rather than the trip they came from.
The bulk of the pictures from my documentation of Lisbon came from a single procession on the last day I was there and pretty much every shot was taken within a single hour. Sometimes a slice will encapsulate the whole and felt that this event which pretty much the whole town turned out for, gave me an insight into the city and showed what was most important to the good folk of Lisbon, namely community & tradition. The procession was of a religious nature but for me, it was more to do with the people coming together as it was to celebrate their beliefs. It also felt like going back in time to an era where there was more solidarity amongst citizens and from a time when you could be in large crowds en masse together (remember those days?) and maybe that was why I was so keen to stay in this little virtual travel time capsule bubble.
Hope you enjoyed too. I will back on the streets of London as of next week, well as much as the lockdown will allow me. Stay safe people!