Ten Minutes Away by Colin Aherne

Ten Minutes Away by Colin Aherne

On day 7 of the lockdown I started going for a daily walk. When leaving the apartment I set an alarm on my phone for ten minutes, once it went off, I’d stop and make one photo. After returning home I’d write down a quick description of the photo and pin the location to a map, making a ten minute radius around my apartment.

Often I was in a very familiar area that I’ve passed a thousand times before but would never think twice about photographing, and sometimes I was discovering a street I’ve never been down. I’m not used to photographing in this way, forcing myself to stop at an exact point and see what I got. Some days I liked it, some days I didn’t.

After day 44 I ran out of places to go. As I am writing this it is day 71.

day 14 – 10:04 am – standing on a bridge, lots of traffic & joggers behind me, looking at the bridge from the other day
day 17 – 14:56 pm – snowed, went outside to take photo, walked 10 minutes…snow stopped…made photo of an empty parking space
day 26 – 15:24 pm – branches between trees in graveyard
day 15 – 12:31 pm – rocket, go back when everything is back to normal
day 42 – 06:58 am – children drawing christmas
day 27 – 16:12 pm – plane behind cloud, should have been going to Tel Aviv in a few days
day 20 – 18:56 pm – five trees, man walks by laughing and says ‘watch out for corona in your camera’
day 32 – 13:28 pm – kino i remember walking past in 2015, someone stands in my place when i leave to see what i was photographing
day 33 – 16:36 pm – sun in window, looks like a very powerful torch
day 43 – 06:12 am – drachenspielplatz, too early
day 16 – 16:07 pm – nests in tree, woman passing with lovely dog
day 9 – 16:53 pm – between bridges looking at bridge

Colin Aherne is a photographer based in Berlin, Germany.