Photos & Text by Rosie Simsek
BA (Hons) Interaction Design Arts (Year 1)
The covid-lockdown has created a peculiar separation between inside and outside, and for many of us, the outside has become really unfamiliar. Using scaffolding outside to frame passers by, I took these photographs from my window with the curiosity of this separation in mind.
The scaffolding acts as an urban cover. I can experience the street as an onlooker, with no fear of being looked at myself. There is an unsettling power that comes from looking out of a high up window and observing people below, and an even more unsettling one from taking their photograph. I found it acceptable to take pictures of masked people as their identity is hidden, and this also lends itself to the weirdness that is the outside world during a pandemic. The curiosity extends; who are these people, where are they going, what do they do… Why should I know? And then I walk away from the window into the safety of my indoors.
