Photographer Sean McDonnel has published a book with very nice candid shots from the streets of London. The book is titled “loved;life;London”, a quote from Virginia Woolfs novel “MrsDalloway”. Here is what McDonnel himself says about the connection between the book and the pictures:
I relate to the novel Mrs Dalloway in part because of its setting in central London, but more so through the style of writing, the personal thoughts of individuals woven into their experience of a day in the city.
The photographs of mine that arrest me most are those in which the figures passing through the frame beg me to wonder what’s on their minds: the mundane, the epic, the hope, the fear.
As I work in black and white, in a style that concentrates on moments of interaction between individuals and the fabric of the city, I am also drawn to the impression that it’s sometimes a challenge to precisely place these images in a particular year or even decade.
For me these moments are a bond with the lives of Londoners coming to terms with the new experience of a rapidly changing London in the 1920s, around the time Mrs Dalloway was written, an experience we continue to encounter today.
