Published: 02 September 2010
by GERALD ISAAMAN

Technology rules, or so we are told. We are obsessed with our Twittering mobile phones, crazy gadgets, computers and the internet. Our lives are dominated by incessant 24-hour television that has transformed our thoughts into pictures.

So has the world of reality been reduced to dots on a screen?

Photography, too, has been re-invented. 

Gone are the days when you locked the bathroom door and turned on the safe light to develop film torn from the back of your camera.

Today, it’s all digital and instant, with pictures appearing as quickly as you press the button. You learn to manipulate the photographs, taking out puddles and double chins, if you are so inclined.

So where is the new art in all that?

Take a look at London Light by Sandra Lousada, long-admired since the 1960s for her fashion, beauty and theatrical portraiture, as well as for her pictures of family life – not forgetting her studies of Hampstead Heath.

She has now changed course, using her consummate skill and creativity to delve into the exciting world of making light come to life – at night – in obvious as well as abstract forms, adapting the latest technology to the demands of her imagination, imbuing it with human warmth.

The book’s title and its spiral staircase cover-shot provide a clue to Sandra’s subjects. 

They range across the capital, from Blackfriars to Westminster, Canary Wharf to Hampstead, Trafalgar Square to Vauxhall.

What fascinates me is how Sandra discovered this new horizon for her work and how, within it, lies a personal story of love and grief.

She explains: “In 2005 my husband, Brian, died. Looking back, I can see how clearly these photographs were influenced by losing him. 

“And even more, in some miraculous way, [they were influenced] by the journey of our life together, a sort of merging of my vision and our different passions – his for transport and architecture, mine for photography.

“In the winter months that followed his death I couldn’t sleep, so I would drive around London in the middle of the night, quite often in strong winds and rain. 

“Every so often something would catch my eye and I’d get out of the car and struggle to see what I had noticed and try to work out how to record it.

“Often, to start with, I found myself photographing a bus or a series of traffic lights or a train on a bridge in the rain, probably because I was so used to following a new tram or bus route while Brian tried them out. My children called these my crying pictures…”

So Sandra has not only put on record a different face of London – one that resonates the colour and chaos of modern city life – but she has also used her considerable talent to create a poignant 

tribute to her late husband.

• London Light. By Sandra Lousada. Frances Lincoln, £25