Welcome to my photographs and reflections
Five years on from the 2020 lockdowns
On display until 31st August 2025 at Southmead Hospital, BS10 5NB
Opposite the X-ray department, Gate 18, Brunel Building.
All images For Sale LightStreams.net@outlook.com
Price list is at bottom of page
Five years ago our lives were upended by the Covid pandemic.
Some became sick and even died. Some found themselves on the front line as key workers. Some experienced a sudden collapse or surge in demand for their business. And some were locked down, with their life on “Press Pause…”
What happened for you?
For me it was an opportunity to wander the empty streets of Bristol early in the mornings, exploring the city I live in.
All these photographs were taken during 2020, within walking distance of our home.
Floating Harbour
During the first week of lockdown in March 2020, everything was still. There were no boats disturbing the river, no traffic rumbling along the roads. It seemed as if even the wind was holding its breath, wondering what would come next…
The Floating Harbour became a mirror of this profound new stillness.
Park Street
Park Street is usually bustling with people and traffic. It would not be safe to stand unprotected in the middle of the road. A place so familiar became suddenly so different – marked by absence.
Absence was a common experience in 2020. People, places, things, activities we took for granted were suddenly beyond our reach. We needed to adjust…
College Green
April 2020. On Easter morning the cathedral would normally be thronged with people. As I walked across College Green that silent Easter, early in the morning, early in the spring, the lamp post stood dark & alone.
But when the rising sun reached the waiting lamp post, the glass filled with light. Hope was kindled for a new day, fresh possibilities and a new season ahead.
True Grit
At the heart of the NHS lies the belief that all people deserve care. It takes compassion to want the best for everyone, no matter who they are.
When the pandemic began, NHS staff carried on, at significant personal risk to their own lives and families, despite already hearing about deaths of colleagues in China and Italy.
To keep turning up for work and placing yourself in harm’s way, so you can take care of others, takes real True Grit.
THANK YOU ALL!
Signs of the Times
NHS staff may be made scapegoats when the system and its resources fail to meet people’s needs and expectations. This can be so disheartening.
For a brief time things changed. We suddenly became aware of the fragility of our lives and health. People found many different ways to express this.
Saying, “Thank you,” shifts mood - both for those who receive thanks, and also those who say thank you.
There were many ways. The sound of clapping rang out each week, as neighbours emerged into the street to clap together for NHS staff.
Across the city new signs sprang up on street corners & schools, on windows & advertising hoardings, on boats & buses.
During the pandemic we chose how to respond to fear. As the writing on the pavement put it:
Forget Everything And Run
OR
Face Everything And Rise
Face mask
One simple symbol, laden with so many memories, captured the culture of the moment.
We were all asked to wear a face mask. For those who already wore masks for work, little changed. For others it provoked all sorts of reactions.
Did you wear yours to protect yourself from others, or to protect others from you?
Did you wear it with reluctance or relief, or refuse altogether?
So many masks were dropped as litter in our streets, parks and rivers.
To all those who cleaned up after us throughout the pandemic, and who continue to empty our bins and pick up our litter: THANK YOU!
Looking up
My mum, who longed for grandchildren, died shortly before I became pregnant with our first child. In her last days I asked if she had any advice to pass on for a future generation.
“Take them out in the fields and let them lie on their backs and watch the clouds go by”.
Why didn’t I make more time to do that…??
I thought of her during lockdown as I lay on my back in the garden, watching the laundry alive above me, dancing in the wind.
Connection
That sunny April we ate many lunches in the garden, listening to a robin and enjoying the pink clematis draping the walls around us.
Eventually the petals dropped, but another treat was in store: delicate seed heads, waiting for a puff of wind to set them off on their journey...
Sometimes in life we have moments of connection. We may never again pass that way, meet that person, see that sight, hear that sound or feel that touch.
Yet in that brief connection, something catches hold in our heart – and remains with us long after the moment has passed.
At heart
Dandelions grow on wild or untended ground, like this one in Stokes Croft - a busy, dirty, city street, which during lockdown became a visual treasure trove of both the mundane and the unexpected.
So often our attention rests on the surface fluff of life, but a time comes when these things get blown away, and then what…?
What lies at the heart – beauty or barrenness?
How often do we pause to consider what might lie in our own heart, or that of the one we are with? When we look beneath the surface, we find exquisite beauty hidden away.
It is there in all of us.
It just takes time to mine for it, underneath the crust of all that life has thrown at us.
Rubbish
The cold night had left condensation on the inside of a plastic bottle, in a recycling box on the pavement. The water drops sparkled in the sun, coloured by other items in the box.
Painted above a café on Stokes Croft is: “Beauty from Ashes.” Hope rising from despair.
The pandemic turned many of our hopes and dreams to ashes - things to be chucked away, like empty bottles.
And yet, contained within those gut-wrenching experiences, lurked seeds of fresh beauty and hope
We can choose to focus on beauty or ashes. The facts may not change, but how we view these makes all the difference.
What we give our attention to is what will grow in our lives.
Window shopping
With doors shut, windows became important.
The pandemic brought into sharp focus things that we might not have had time to think about before.
In times of upheaval, we can get in a tangle between the reality of what is in front of us, and the reflections of what lies behind us.
We need time and space to be kind and gentle with ourselves, while we disentangle and start to make sense of things again...
Out there
Where is the far end of the bridge? We won’t find out unless we have the courage to step onto it and start walking into the mist…
When what’s out there is beyond our understanding and beyond our control, what gives us the courage to keep going? What do we trust enough to hold the weight of our life?
For me personally, the one thing I have found that has been strong enough to support the bridge of my own life is my connection to the life of Jesus – the unconditional love found at the cross where he died, and the life-restoring power that awakened him from the grave.
Christmas Day
Christmas is usually a busy time, if you are lucky enough to have family and friends to be with.
But in 2020, with one son locked down in London and the other working on a Covid ward, I had the opportunity to go out and celebrate what Covid couldn’t steal – the joy of a sunrise, and the peace that lurks beyond the commotion.
Joy and peace – the heart of Christmas.
Sunrise
The sun was rising on the final morning of 2020. What makes this picture special for me is the mist floating in the valley, the touch of frost on the hills, and the burst of sunbeams scattered by the mist and the dust in my elderly camera.
So it’s the inability to see clearly, the cold, and the messiness of what’s in my way that are the very things that make this picture worth turning aside to look at.
Confusion, cold, mess, imperfection – these things were upfront in 2020.
It was a year we may want to forget. Yet the very things that made it so hard can be the starting points for new ways of noticing the beauty of life that is all around us.
What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare. W.H. Davies
Cumberland Basin
31st December - Goodbye 2020!
The tide of events in that pandemic year overflowed into our lives. So much had changed from how things were at the start. We had made it through unwelcome, challenging circumstances. Some took unexpected, liberating opportunities. Some watched and listened and recorded. We adapted and lives flowed on…
Those of us who survived 2020 were given the gift of being alive to greet the incoming tide of 2021.
More challenges and opportunities lie ahead…
Forget Everything And Run or
Face Everything And Rise?
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