Given the amount of grey weather that London endures, sharp contrasts of light and dark are hard to capture when photographing the city. Which makes this set of images by London-based photographer Marco Barbieri all the more impressive.
"I am particularly driven by the use of geometry and lines," he tells Londonist. "In this particular project my aim was to portray the relationship between human beings and their urban surroundings. A big city sometimes can be just overwhelming - here people tend to disappear in their everyday isolation."
The atmosphere Barbieri conjures is eerie and distant but coolly beautiful, more west coast US than London. "The city is represented by negative spaces eating up the frame and the people. Darkness is my medium to achieve this effect."
Locations for the project were carefully selected, with the photographer looking for areas of town that would "only let a shard [not that one...] of light pass through at a certain moment of the day (the bridge in Finsbury Park at 6pm [or] Centre Point at 1 pm)."
Each image seems to have been constructed in a controlled environment, even though in reality, Barbieri's 'Lights and Lines' series is pure street photography.
All photos by Marco Barbieri. See more of his London photography here.
