86 Days in Lockdown — With Photography^®

Our official lockdown in the United Kingdom, during the Covid-19 pandemic, started on 23 March 2020 and ended on 31 May. Lockdown in our household of two started on Saturday 7 March.

Powerless in a way that most had never felt before, I recognised I was in the first stages of trauma: partway between anxiety and paralysis, wanting to escape from that moment but knowing that to do so would put me at risk of impacting the effects of what was happening to me — to us all — as we faced our own mortality in isolation. I turned naturally to photography to help me — to document and create order out of my chaotic mind; to explore and diffuse my emotions.

My photographs are a melange of moments with different layers of meaning. All reveal aspects during that particular period up to 31 May, when England started to relieve some restrictions. Then we started to face the realisation that the virus was here to stay; we had to adjust to a new reality with socio-economic hardships of the like that were as yet unknown to us.’

For 76 of my 86 days I ran an online project for the Facebook group ‘SheClicks’, which currently has a membership of over 6500 female photographers from all over the globe.

Some of my images in this sketchbook were the Conversation Starters that headed up my posts, written to discourage feelings of isolation by encouraging group participation; the posting and sharing of members own images for everyone to comment on.”