The Gasholders

November 2020. London was back in lockdown and the daily walk had become one of the few ways to experience the city beyond home. Along Regent’s Canal, the old gasholder frames still stood open in the fog. They have since been incorporated into new housing, part of the wider redevelopment of this stretch of east London. Cities need homes, and London needs them urgently. But places also accumulate memory. The question is how much of that existing character can remain as new uses arrive. This photograph catches that moment in between. The industrial structure is still dominant, the canal is almost empty, and two people disappear into the fog on a route that became unusually important during lockdown.