A Woman’s Quiet Strength

Just an ordinary parking area around a tower block in London Fields, with a few young boys playing into the dusk like they do on any other summer evening.
But this time, Odile and I were there, determined to get something out of the location. And I think we eventually did.
Just as we were trying this last spot, the wind picked up so much that I had to give up on the umbrella. Didn’t I wish I had an assistant to move my highly directional bare flash as Odile moved, another to hold a reflector and fill the shadows, and a stylist to make dealing with her hair in the wind a little easier — so I wouldn’t lose quite so many good shots to strands blowing across her eyes and the slow-recycling flash I had on the day? Of course I did!
But we made do. And perhaps that’s really what making a picture on location is about. The two of us will probably never be together at that same spot, at the same time of the day and in the same conditions again. You get one chance, you make do with what you have, and if you are lucky, you preserve something of the place, the moment and the encounter — something that can never happen in quite the same way again.
And then the same wind that made everything so much more complicated became part of Odile’s dance with the place, and added to the sense of movement and freedom.
The photos we shot there may not be technically perfect, and the lighting may not be the kindest to Odile. But I like them very much because, to me, they reveal something of her quiet fighting spirit — and how we managed to make something of a place that might otherwise have gone completely unnoticed.

With Odile in London Fields. 
From the series Here We Are.