Over the last decade, Lancashire-born, London-based Christine Rodgers has trekked in Bhutan, Nepal and the Indian states and regions 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 rely on her Olympus camera to take photographs on her trips, but has since switched predominantly to using her phone. “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 town on the West Bengal-Sikkim border in northern India. It was after midnight when she arrived; her guide had stopped at the police station to collect passes for the area they would be trekking through.
“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 in this year’s Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, one of three Rodgers took before quickly moving on. She never did find out the reason for the unease she sensed before stepping back into the night.
