I early spring of 2020, shortly before we first national lockdown in the UK was announced, I had made plans to photograph all of my neighbours in the street where I live, inside their homes.
I moved here in early 2018 and had been very quickly accepted into this street where everybody knows everybody else, helps and supports one another and lives life side by side in a way I had not know anywhere before. I felt grateful and so I wanted to document the wonderful community of people with whom I share my days in this part of Bristol.
But before I could begin taking photographs Covid-19 struck and on 16. March the nation went into lockdown making my initial idea impossible to realise. I resolved to carry on regardless and decided that I would create photographs of my neighbours outside and inside their homes from the opposite side of the street instead.
And so I approached each household individually to explain what I wanted to do and to my amazement each and every one agreed to be photographed.
Here you can now see the portraits I took of the people in my street over the course of the last 12 months – starting at the beginning of lockdown in 2020 and ending with the reopening of the long winter lockdown of 2020 / 2021.
I think we were lucky: while everyone in Britain was called upon to cultivate a new sense of solidarity with their fellow humans, we were already living it. Lockdown brought many problems, but a lack of togetherness was not one of them for us.
I love living here very much and am deeply grateful to all of my neighbours for being the people that they are and for
making this series happen.