As the world shuts up shop in a bid to contain the coronavirus pandemic, Struggles From Below documents the desolate scenes of its third most visited tourist destination. Words and images by Oliver Gordon.

11 April 2020

All around the world, cities are going into lockdown; shuttering bars and restaurants, closing schools, and banning public gatherings — the extent to which hasn’t been seen since the Spanish Flu of 1918. 

Public authorities worldwide are scrambling to implement varying degrees of restriction on social interaction — from social distancing recommendations to enforced national quarantines — as governments look to slow the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus and stem the tide of patient inflows that threaten to topple their national health services. Over a third of the world’s population is now under some form of social restriction. 

Although not designed to be a panacea to the pandemic, the lockdowns are aimed at slowing the rate of infections and subsequent deaths while the global epidemiological community searches for a vaccine or treatment. Across the planet, the virus has thus far infected 1.6 million people and resulted in 100,000 deaths. 

The World Health Organisation has called on all countries to "continue efforts that have been effective in limiting the number of cases and slowing the spread of the virus."

The strictest measures have been put in place in the likes of China, France, Italy, Spain, Poland and New Zealand. In the UK, a national lockdown was declared on 23 March, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson announcing that citizens would only be permitted to leave their homes for essential work, exercise, and to buy food or medicine. Gatherings of more than two people were banned — except for those living together — as were all ceremonies, barring funerals.

But last weekend, spring very much sprung in the country, with the British sunshine finally waking from its six-month slumber. Addressing the nation on the preceding Friday, Health Secretary Matt Hancock warned: "We're set for a warm weekend in some parts of the country but the disease is still spreading. This advice is not a request, it is an instruction: Stay at home." And the people, by and large, did just that.

In London, the first balmy weekend of spring typically means vast swathes of scantily clad, pasty bodies descending en masse on the city’s tourist hotspots, as the nation collectively peels itself out of its vampiric hibernation and finds any excuse to go binge on a whole winter’s deficit of Vitamin D. But this year, probably for the first time in living memory, these cultural sunbeds lay vacant and silent. Struggles From Below went out to document the ghostly urban scenes of one the world’s busiest cities.