Photographer

Louise Stockden

Finalist in

Open Category

Written Statement

In Lockdown at Home: In this time of the COVID–19 pandemic, a time of great uncertainly and vulnerability, I find myself in lockdown in my own home. As I go about my daily activities, feelings and reminders of fragility seem ever–present.

Nanna In Isolation: My frail, elderly mother is in lockdown in her own home, and my contact with her is now in the form of video calls on my old ipad. This technological form of video calling is foreign to mum, and I captured her bewildered expression as she struggled to hear and communicate ‘through the wires’ as she calls it. It struck me that the cracked screen reinforced the fractured situation we find ourselves in.

The Yard : Children also find themselves in isolation at this time. Their days are spent in front of computer screens doing their schoolwork by remote learning. As an only child, my friend misses having her friends over to play. It has been weeks since I’ve heard the laughter and squeals of child’s play in my back yard. This image represents the fragility of childhood and the abandonment of play. I took this image from the ground level in keeping with a child’s perspective. I used an aperture of f4.0 to isolate the broken doll’s head from the background detail of the yard.

Caught: Whilst cleaning my windows, the iridescent colours of this dead fly caught in a web captured my attention. I used my 100mm macro lens with a diffused flash to capture the detail and luminous beauty of the fly’s body juxtaposed against the messy cob web. A reminder of the fragility of nature.