I'm in London again, after a week. I came especially to see an exhibition of Francis Bacon at the National Portrait Gallery—Human Presence. By the way, it's a must-see if you happen to be in the area.

The paintings are powerful and can storm deep strong emotions. I left with my mind spinning.

Bacon’s distorted, raw approach to capturing the human condition deeply impacted me. His paintings, filled with blurred figures and dark, chaotic energy, led me to wonder if I could achieve a similar effect in photography and I felt compelled to experiment with photography in this state.

Nothing could match better than the long exposure technique which I started playing with a week ago, to create emotion, tension, and movement in a still frame.

Francis Bacon’s work often blurs the lines between form and distortion, and I wanted to reflect that in my images. With long exposure photography, I could stretch time and motion within a single shot, creating a sense of unease or ambiguity. Just as Bacon’s figures seem trapped in a state of flux, I aimed to capture scenes where movement was fragmented, unsettling, yet visually striking.

Bacon’s paintings often feature dark, brooding tones and dramatic lighting, and I wanted to mimic that contrast in my photography.

Shooting in black and white helped me to focus on light and shadow, much like Bacon’s palette of heavy, moody colours.

His work, despite its complexity, often emphasizes isolation—solitary figures warped and alone within their frames. I played with this idea by trying to isolate single subjects within busy environments. By using long exposure, I made the background swirl with movement while keeping the subject relatively still, distorting the world around them while they remained frozen in time.