For my final assignment, I have decided to continue working on images related to Covid-19. I wanted to take a more conceptual direction with these images to attempt to capture the emotions and anxiety that many people are feeling during this time. I wanted to capture a story through landscapes paired with a self-portrait. I wanted to juxtapose the landscapes with the conceptual images to capture the emotional story. I took the images of myself in a bathtub to allude to the idea of drowning, the water is opaque to capture the feeling of anxiety and being unclear of what the future holds. The virus is a respiratory illness and I used the cigarette and water in the mouth to symbolize the virus. The story in my images shows someone falling further into isolation, suffering silently. I wanted each pairing of images to relate to one another in order to draw comparisons between the landscapes and the portraits. It is important to reflect on the internal anxieties we face during this time so I used the portraits to represent the internal monologue of anxiety, chaos, and loneliness, with the landscapes to represent the physical emptiness and space between people.
The first two images are the realization of loneliness that many people are faced with. These images hold a similar emotion as they both have intense highlights and some type of grid, the lights and darks are also very similar.
The last two images are meant to be a final note on silent suffering which can take many forms. There are many stories that are going to go untold before, during, and after the virus is under control. I want people to understand that the virus is a threat both mentally and physically to everyone, while also understanding that there are people who are more vulnerable.
Taking these images was a bit of a struggle as I do not have my usual camera and lighting equipment. I used a desk lamp propped up on a kitchen stool as my light source which almost fell into the tub so taking these images was almost a near-death experience. My mom was also not very happy with me after I used up all of the milk.
PhotoChronologies 