On a previous visit to her brother’s London flat, Francesca Jones had taken her own reading light. Margot, her almost seven-year-old niece, was quite taken with it, so for her next birthday, Jones gave it to Margot.
“Margot had a camp bed in her parents’ room while I was staying. That night, she was snuggled up reading to me from her book, Jasmine the Present Fairy, light around her neck. It was such a special moment, so I captured it; I don’t think she even noticed me taking it,” Jones says. “I’d have missed it had I gone off to get my digital camera, or she would have noticed and I wouldn’t have captured something so authentic.” In editing the image, she enhanced the saturation and lifted the shadows a little, but nothing more.
The feeling of being engrossed in a book is something Jones recognises from her own childhood. “I think it’s quite magical,” she says. “The shot makes me feel nostalgic, as well as invoking a sense of poignancy. It’s crazy how short childhood is, and how fast they grow up. It’s not so long ago that I was reading to her; now she reads to me. It all sounds a bit cliched, but I didn’t really appreciate that until I became an auntie.”
Jones hopes her image will act as a reminder of the passing of time. “We should savour our time with our loved ones,” she says.
