Our world has shrunk. Daily life confined. Goals for making art can seem more distant and harder to reach. The remarkable, however, continues to be right before your very eyes, ready for you to document today.
One day we will look back in wonder at that time we were all asked to keep to ourselves for a while. There is talk that this crisis is the WW2 of our generation – if that is so, what we write, paint and photograph is essential. We must start to look closer to home to tell our stories.
In the couple of weeks before the Coronavirus warnings about spatial distancing started to get serious, I was headlong into a project documenting a local transport stop in my home town. The people, colour and hustle were fascinating to me, and I began to enjoy the rhythm and the routine of documenting that bustling place. As time went on and we started to lock down a bit more, my routine changed, and I no longer had access, and now, working from home, I don't have the luxury to head out and keep photographing that specific story.
I am now nostalgic for the simple commute from the house to the office, the bus ride or cycle and my long meandering walks through the city streets to get to my workplace. I miss them desperately.
I do, however, have a story unfolding before my eyes. Just like you do. Unique and worth telling.
The confinement that comes with a once in a lifetime pandemic has forced me to look contemplatively to my immediate surroundings, to my daily routine and how I am making it work given that I have only a precious slither of time outside the house. That might be the same for you.
Work-life mingles with home life and recreation space, and all rolled into one. Isn't that the unique story unfolding before us? How has this changed you and your relationships? How different is your routine? Are your interactions with others in your household and neighbourhood different? How will you record that? What do you want to remember from this time? What is vital to capture even though you are so desperate to leave it behind?
While there are plenty of images and documents of empty streets and people wearing masks, of toilet paper roll fights and unemployment queues, one thing that will be unique to my experience is…my experience. If you have looked at history the first-person perspective – the little things – what we ate, sang, laughed and loved, how we lived our day to day make up the historical record that narrate the experience of the time. This perspective is what is essential to document right now.
Starting last December, I started a bookmaking project called "Book-a-month", where I have committed to photographing and documenting my life and creating a book every month full of my most meaningful images. The books are in chronological order, and I intend to make a book a month for the rest of my life! — with a short term goal of getting to 12 books in Year 1. I have now realised how important this project is to me. Already looking back on the book in December and even January, it seems like I am looking back into a different time.
Juxtaposed against the events that are happening around the world today, my life seemed so different, full of hugs and close contact, and now it is so different. To me, as a photographer, that is a signal that it is an absolute imperative to get that documented today. Photographing my everyday routine means my books for March, April, May and beyond are going to be a unique diary of how a different sort of living pans out not only for my family and me but for my immediate neighbourhood, community, city and country.
I have questions in my mind, of course — how will we cope, what will change and what will stay the same. I cannot predict what these times will pan out to be, but I know from this little experience of my book-a-month project that I will be looking at them in fascination in a year, regardless of where the world will be.
So it is this message that I carry with me today — to remind myself, just as much as to communicate to you, to continue photographing, writing, painting, diarising your days. We live in interesting and extraordinary and terrifying times, and it is so imperative to tell the personal stories of our individual lives. These stories are the ones that are going to be more powerful and meaningful in the future.
The news media is full of the same takes on the days, the same speeches and announcements and terrifying statistics. Our stories, however, are unique and coloured with the patina of human experience that is our own. So document them, whatever your medium – keep going and use your art to get you through these times, share it with those you love, and wash your hands' people, wash. Your. Hands.