Black and White Street Photographs

A street photography selection from London 2012, revisited from today's point of view. Fragments of the city, and the air of that time, quietly remaining in photographs I once set aside.

In 2012, when I was walking around London with my Hasselblad and taking street photographs, the London I had pictured in my mind was, I think, still there. The cobblestone streets, and the old-style street lamps standing slightly tilted. For me, these things were what made London feel like London.

In such a city, there were people moving around with their own purposes, not bound by any particular style or fashion, each spending their own time in their own way. I was pressing the shutter, trying to capture this London.

Still, even after developing the film, I could not really take photographs I was satisfied with. I remember sitting in front of the prints, thinking deeply about something.

More than ten years have passed, and recently I went back to the photographs I did not choose at the time, and made a selection from today's point of view. Even in the photographs I was not satisfied with before, I feel something of the air of that time, and small fragments of the London I was seeing, are quietly still there.

Time is something that flows. When I look back at these photographs, I see the scenes and people that only belonged to that time, and I cannot help but feel the reality I can no longer return to, and the passing of time.