Through a Glass Darkly, a photo series by Nick Turpin, shows passengers riding a bus at night. These candid portraits of strangers gives us a clever, furtive glimpse of people going about their daily commute in London.
The windows covered in frost and condensation give the pictures an awesome effect. Although there are a few photos in the series where the commuters can be seen more clearly, because the glass has been wiped clean, I actually prefer the images where the people are a little more obscured. It maintains a little of the people’s privacy, as well as adding another layer of interest. The cloudy shapes of colour in the backgrounds, and the abstract water droplets and streaks on the windows, give the photos an almost impressionist quality.
“These pictures of London Bus passengers in the winter months were made at night from a raised platform with a long lens hand held at 1/40th second, on the limits of what modern camera sensors can record,” says Turpin in the artist’s statement.
