Capturing Time Through Mixed Media Art

I photographed this woman recently as she walked slowly through Euston Station. The five sequential images were taken over a period of approximately fifteen seconds. I later combined them with a background photograph made from a moving car on the same evening, then developed the final collage by hand using a variety of media.

In the 1990s, I frequently experimented with sequential repetition. At that time, I would cut and reassemble black-and-white darkroom prints into collages, hoping to encourage viewers to engage with an image in a different way. The repeated figure here suggests how a person leaves traces of themselves through time. Rather than disappearing with each step, every moment remains visible, accumulating within the frame.

Among the hundreds of people moving through the heat and bustle of the station, this woman stood out. I was drawn to her demeanour and the quiet determination of her stride. In this image, she evokes ideas of accumulated experience, life’s journey, and the simultaneous visibility and invisibility of older people in public space.

The blurred city background contrasts with her repeated presence. The environment appears fast-moving and chaotic, while her expression and pace seem detached from the rush around her. She occupies a different rhythm, carrying her own sense of time through the city.

I have titled the work On My Way because it is concerned with transition rather than arrival. It is a meditation on movement through urban space and through time itself. The piece reflects my belief that there is a poetic potential embedded within everyday encounters on the streets of London.