‘It was dark and deserted. I was drawn by the light’: Christine Rodgers’ finest cellphone image | Images

Over the final decade, Lancashire-born, London-based Christine Rodgers has trekked in Bhutan, Nepal and the Indian states and areas of Uttarakhand, Ladakh and Sikkim. “I’ve developed something of a passion for the Himalayas,” she says. “I love being in the mountains; not climbing, but walking and camping at altitude, in sight of the wonderful range of peaks.”

Rodgers used to depend on her Olympus digital camera to take images on her journeys, however has since switched predominantly to utilizing her cellphone. “I love the immediacy,” she notes. “I did miss having a viewfinder at first, but I now feel completely at home with the screen.”

This {photograph} was taken in 2024 in Melli, a city on the West Bengal-Sikkim border in northern India. It was after midnight when she arrived; her information had stopped on the police station to gather passes for the realm they’d be trekking by means of.

“Melli was mostly dark and deserted, apart from the police station and this bank branch. I was drawn initially by the light, and the blocks of colours of paint, then by the stillness of the man at the counter. There seems to be some kind of tension in the air, caused by a customer waiting there alone at this hour of night.”

The shot is displayed on this 12 months’s Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, one in all three Rodgers took earlier than shortly shifting on. She by no means did discover out the explanation for the unease she sensed earlier than stepping again into the night time.