When we talk about landscape photography, we usually would visualise trees, mountains, rivers, gardens, beautiful buildings and so on. Never would an evening’s dull sky with man-made machines spring to mind. Does it not mean that in photographs we seek escapism too?

With this photo, I am using landscape photography as documentary photography. So, I am not trying to escape into a world that is not always so beautiful around us. This is the reality. The ever-changing urban landscape and the ubiquitous machines.

Kew is a beautiful town, and this is the last thing one would expect of Kew from a photographer. That’s right. There will be expectations of colours, sunshine, flowers, trees and such. My photograph, in that sense, is anti-Kew.

This was not a planned photograph. As I often drive on that bridge, I notice cranes on the building sites. This particular evening, as I approached the site, I noticed three silhouettes in a synchronised resting position, with hundreds of lights in the foreground – lights in the buildings, of moving cars, on the tower and billboards, etc. The clouds and the rest were dark. I had to capture the shot, but had to do it from my moving car as one is not allowed to stop the car on the bridge.

Phone camera was the only option. Blurry is what I wanted. Blurry is what I got. Blurry is what looks best.

I think.

I converted it to black and white.

……. Sapna Dhandh-Sharma