ABSENCE

Luke Allen spent lockdown photographing people in Camden, and in particular the people of Bloomsbury. What Luke missed the most were people’s faces. Neighbours, friends and acquaintances were missing from the streets and when they slowly emerged their faces were obscured. Luke's photographs explore what for many people will be a loss; the loss of the familiar face, the smile, the non-verbal language and our self-identity in a post-lockdown masked world. Some people were photographed just with masks, others only without their mask. But the majority of the images come in pairs - an image of the familiar face without the mask, and an image of the face with the mask. Those photographed live or work in and around Bloomsbury and are familiar faces captured in a year when we are all experiencing a change in how the world perceives us and how we view ourselves. A video of a 3D online gallery version of his exhibition can be seen here.

In the gallery below at first glance you see only part of the image. Click on any image and it will come up full screen with the original framing and you can then browse the whole gallery with images at full size.

As Luke started taking photographs for the project early in lockdown he experimented with single images of people he met with or without a mask. It was not necessarily a reflection of their desire to wear a face covering, simply about the moment he took the photograph. Luke includes these single images of Bloomsbury people as part of this exhibition.