As Luck Would Have It

“As luck would have it, I was actually looking for someone to model for a portrait shoot in Hackney.” That’s what I first wrote to Odile, quite spontaneously. After all, it was one of my favourite photographs from Hackney Wick that had led me to her, and I was genuinely looking for someone for a shoot in East London.
And, as luck would have it, she saw my abrupt message, kindly responded, and introduced me to London Fields.
It was early summer then, with the longest days and properly warm summer evenings in London. By the time we could, against all odds, make the shoot happen, though, a lot had changed. We had each left London for a while, and returned — in my case, with quite a few tears. London’s drought had turned the grass in London Fields to straw, and fallen leaves had covered the field in yellow and orange. Not quite the green field we had imagined when we first talked about the place. But somehow, all that time and everything that happened before we finally met became part of those two hours of shooting. We didn’t know each other, yet I think that long, unlikely backstory became part of the photographs in a way that would be difficult to create through a conventional model casting.
She too had spontaneously decided to model for a photographer and take part in a project she knew very little about. Yet she brought such calmness, patience and depth to the shoot that we could create quite a few solid images right from the start.
This is one of our first photographs, set up quite simply, before we started pushing things further. But I like it very much — perhaps because, in its simplicity and with the smile that escaped her pose, it feels to me like a portrait of Odile — a portrait of Odile in London Fields, which, by her own description, is where she feels at home.

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