London in Lockdown Part 3 – Focus on Mannequins

I started taking photographs of mannequins during in Covid-19 pandemic back in March 2020 in the week the lockdown was announced. I’d walked to Hampstead on the Friday to kill two birds with one stone – for daily exercise and to buy bagels and challah at a bakery there. Hampstead is full of high end boutiques but this surreal sight caught my eye:

Here’s a series of photos featuring mannequins in this two month period. Below, a lingerie shop in Soho where the shadows cast by the metal grilles contribute to a connotation of caged imprisonment:

Surreal windows in Oxford Street:

Mannequins usually deploying sportswear now look like super-fit life models at an art class:

Surreal twins:

Surreal colourful but dystopian street scene, May 2020

Locked in colour and silks in Berwick Street:

Magritte-like illusion in Hampstead:

Abstract monochromatic mannequin composition with shadow:

Illusion in Soho; not unique to the pandemic but taken in this period:

And finally, mystery in Brewer Street: