Photo collection captures London under lockdown

A South Kilburn photographer spent 2020 walking the streets of London, recording a city coming to terms with life in a pandemic. Abbas M Ahmed was born in Baghdad, Iraq, and moved to London as a child. Now 28, he works as a sales manager in the City. 

A keen photographer, he captures moments of everyday life, inspired by faces, lights, shadows and objects that are somehow out of place. Stories from across London are captured on his website and Instagram page. 

Abbas said he favours the "unrestricted form of art" of street photography that "allows you to express or link your emotions to others". "I picked up the camera in the early days of the global pandemic to project the stories I saw in the brave new streets of London via photographs to my viewers." 

"Sunk in my own thoughts and emotions at the strike of the new world we were unpleasantly introduced to, I found myself in desperate need to voice my emotions and let people know my side of the story we have all become a part of. So, I began to take my evening walks, observing the city – empty were the streets I roamed in search of normality." 

"As I watched the city I love go through this, an urge within me wanted to project this to others so the next time I went out for my evening walk, I took a rarely used camera I had for occasions...snap! - a six-foot, sharp-featured man stood in the heart of Piccadilly Circus looking down at the staircase emerging from its underground station, awaiting someone, the bright lights of the city shining behind him yet slowly lighting up the darkness in front."  

by André Langlois