Elizabeth Day’s iPhone Snapshot Transforms Ephemeral Moment into Royal Academy Art

20 July 2025

Glimpse, 2024, shot on iPhone 15 Pro. Photograph: Elizabeth Day

On a grey December morning in London, podcaster and author Elizabeth Day was on her way to a recording studio when she spotted an unremarkable renovation scene that instantly captivated her. A row of houses was wrapped in scaffolding, their windows temporarily covered with translucent blue plastic sheets and bold swaths of orange tape.

Most passersby would have glanced and moved on, but Day saw something arresting. She raised her iPhone 15 Pro and captured the image before the moment slipped into anonymity. What resonated so deeply for her was what she called the “grammar of it” and its angular texture, a visual geometry that conjured the disciplined lines of Mondrian and the subtle haze of Rothko. In that instant her exhaustion gave way to delight, as the image illuminated the kind of beauty that can elevate the mundane.

Months later, Day submitted the photograph to the Royal Academy of Arts’ prestigious Summer Exhibition a democratic showcase open to anyone with artistic vision. When the Academy accepted her entry, she felt validated not just as a content creator, but as someone who truly made art. She celebrated the exhibition’s inclusivity, saying that allowing anyone to enter underscores art’s fundamental accessibility.

In the wake of the news, an interested buyer emerged. Under Royal Academy terms, 35 percent of any sale would go to the institution, and the remainder a decision close to Day’s heart—is destined for the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. The purpose behind that choice speaks to her desire to channel small moments of personal inspiration into gestures of compassion and contribution.

Returning to the street weeks later, Day found that the renovation had concluded. The window had returned to its standard form, a familiar sight among many others. That discovery made her love the photo even more. Its fleeting beauty could not be replicated now that it was gone. She spoke of the encounter as deliberately transient, choosing a moment that could never be repeated in quite the same way. The photograph becomes not only an invitation to aesthetic appreciation, but an invitation to reflect. Who lived behind that window? What transformations had they endured since the shot? All of this, she hopes, will lead viewers to pause and consider the lives along that street ordinary people, with ordinary stories.

This story aligns seamlessly with Elizabeth Day’s public persona. A Bristol University graduate and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature since 2024, she is best known for her nine books and her influential podcast “How to Fail,” where she explores setbacks and resilience through intimate conversations. She won the Betty Trask Award early in her career and has been a prominent voice in exploring vulnerability, recovery and growth in the public sphere.

Although she is a successful author and broadcaster, Day’s impulse to photograph that window reveals something deeper: an artist’s eye trained to find poetry in the ordinary. The translucent sheet and its taped edges spoke to her exhaustion, her longing for sunlight, and her determination to recognize beauty even in bleakness. The image felt like a bridge connecting the structural austerity of modernist painting with the warmth of human experience. After experiencing that creative uplift, she decided the act was too powerful to hoard.

Her acceptance into the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition affirms more than a moment’s recognition. It shows that art’s power lies not in exclusive curation, but in trust placed in anyone who sees, truly sees the world a little differently. For Day, and for all viewers, the image is both a gift and a mirror. She wants it to move others to look at gray mornings, cracked pavements, and construction zones and wonder what hidden symphonies may lie in plain sight.

The decision to donate sale proceeds is a reminder that art can be ethical as well as evocative. Money exchanged for an image born from an exhausted morning can translate into medicine, schooling or shelter halfway around the world. In choosing that path, Day transforms a simple act of noticing into a moral gesture. The artwork becomes a ripple, extending from a London street to lives in need.

In reflecting on the now-completed renovation, Day spoke of the permanence of impermanence how beauty can exist in a fleeting state even as the visible world moves on. The work asks viewers to consider not only their own narratives, but the unfolding stories of the people behind these shutters and sheets. Her hope is that this simple photo might spark conversations. In a culture often obsessed with perfection, Day’s picture provides us relief. It offers a gentle call to mindfulness, to curiosity, to empathy. It invites viewers to ask who people were, who they have become, and who they might yet be.

Elizabeth Day’s Royal Academy photograph is more than a visual artifact. It is proof that creativity resides in attentiveness. That art is possible anywhere, with any tool—even a phone. And that human generosity can follow unexpected inspiration. For a moment, the world paused, and something emerged that would remain.