Pandemic Diaries (2020-2022)
We had all been hearing about a contagious virus that was spreading across the globe, but the reality of it hadn't really seeped into our consciousness quite yet. In late February of 2020 we flew to Florida to visit family and friends and then, in early March, the virus became real. The coronavirus pandemic descended like a shroud, and enveloped us all. Life changed overnight, information was at a minimum, and people began to get sick and die. The streets emptied, and restaurants, concerts, sporting events, and offices all closed down. We were in close contact with only a few family members and close friends, creating pods with the people we felt most safe with.
Like everything else, all of my photo projects stopped dead in their tracks. I was knee deep into both commercial jobs, and a number of personal music projects, but the pandemic closed the music venues and all of the photo jobs that had been on my calendar were cancelled.
When major world or life events happen the first thing I usually do to make sense of things is to photograph them. But the pandemic was different. I had no immediate desire to document this world changing event. I felt fearful being out in public, and was nervous about even taking my usual journalistic approach to the pandemic, such as photographing people waiting in line for covid tests, or photographing empty streets. Getting sick by an unseeable virus was extremely scary, and I found myself spending my time working on my computer at home, taking walks in the woods, and isolating with my partner Kathy.
As the pandemic wore on and the new normal took hold I found myself taking photos around the house, and carrying my camera on my daily walks even more than usual. Despite the fact that I had made a conscious decision to shy away from documenting the pandemic, I found myself documenting it anyhow. The pandemic had taken over my life, and what I do is to photograph my life, so even though I had made the decision not to photograph the pandemic, I was doing so anyway.
The photographs in this section are presented in chronological order, and show just a few of the moments of what life was like for me during this isolated, scary and insane time.
(For image data, click thumbnail and hover cursor over enlarged photographs)
