Alexander COGGIN c/o MAKING PICTURES was commissioned by the New Yorker to document the days leading up to the Queen’s funeral.
“The New Yorker contacted me on the afternoon/early evening of the Queen’s death (Thursday night) and told me that the Queen was ill and the royals were gathering at Balmoral. The editor asked me to please get my photo kit together and ready to go because they wanted to send me out to the streets of London right away. I hurried down to Buckingham Palace.
While we had wanted to start photographing the mourning process, we quickly realized that this was not at the scale of tragedy of Princess Diana. I think my editor assumed that there would be more visible emotion, yet it was rather sombre. But over the course of the five days on which we photographed, we started to see, firstly, how commerce and capitalism were responding to the Queen. We started to see her face on mugs, T-shirts, flags and also how retail establishments were acknowledging her death.
It was an amazing experience, very hard work, and gave me a lot of insights into what Britishness is and how it is expressed at this interesting intersection of ritual, mourning, monarchy and emotion.”
GoSee ALEXANDER COGGIN c/o MAKING PICTURES
