Social isolation documentary project, Part I • Travelling Lens

Perth's empty train, once bustling with people — *Empty train in Perth*

Australia went further and further into lock-down mode throughout the month of March 2020. I was inspired by other photographers I followed who shared their ideas what they were going to do during this lockdown period to keep up with their photography, business and creativity. The COVID-19 pandemic is definitely one for the history books. Like many photographers out there, I thought doing a mini documentary project to capture daily life during this historic period of time would be interesting and insightful. Something I could look back upon and tell the story of what it felt like living during a pandemic through my own eyes.

N.B. all images were taking using my mobile phone or the Fujifilm X-T10 while in the home or doing essential activities outside of the home. The making of these images did not put myself or others around me in danger. The images were made while conforming to all social distancing rules and guidelines at the time of image-making. I will let the photojournalists do the true news documentation of this period of time

This is likely to become a fairly personal rather than photographically centered post. As I’m writing this, it’s mid-April and Australia has surpassed 6500 cases and is still in lock-down. While the economic and human impact has been massive to many countries around the world, Australia has been relatively fortunate compared to many other countries around the world.

Being a health care worker, I am still heading into work at a hospital while making sure I was adhering to all the hospital and government guidelines. Outside of work and essential outings like those to the supermarket for groceries, like everyone else I have been spending a lot of time at home. I have tried to captured my daily life around the house now that I spent more time at home. This has involved a lot of cooking, food and coffee! I also tried to document the closures and changes to my neighbourhood and places that frequently bustling with people while I’m briefly out of the home.

As a health care worker it certainly made me feel that little bit more appreciated when businesses and communities show their support in little ways. Like the offers of free coffees from Hungry Jacks and McDonalds and discounted food. Initiatives like Adopt A Healthcare Worker on Facebook. Watching the applause from the public in countries such as Spain, UK and Italy who are showing their appreciation towards their hardworking front line staff. It’s all these little but significant acts of kindness that I feel pulls on our heartstrings. In some ways, the pandemic has brought communities closer together. Many governments have taken swift and important changes to make health service provision easier and safer in hours or days, that would typically take months and years to go through parliament and the like. While no system or society or government is perfect in its response to an ever changing crisis, the important thing is everyone working towards better.

On the world stage, it has been very sad and sobering to see the massive number of deaths out of highly populated countries such as Spain, Italy and the United States. I feel fortunate to be in Australia during this crisis where the death rates and infection rates have been low relative to many other countries.

We should most certainly not forget that health care workers are not the only essential workers to be appreciated. It’s also the emergency workers and first responders. The delivery drivers. The farmers. The supermarket workers. There are plenty of people who are working to keep our society functioning.

The photos in this series of blog posts will be ordinary and simple. But it will hopefully capture this unusual period of our lives. I’m kicking off the first blog post scenes on my commute to work and daily routine.

I submitted the cover image for this to Camerahouse’s Photo Friday challenge recently where the theme was “isolation” I was a finalist! Even though I didn’t win the challenge, it was a pleasant surprise to be one of the 10 finalist amongst some pretty cool shots.