As it floated insidiously into our midst, gained a foothold in our consciousness and slowly expanded to fill our entire worldview, the coronavirus pandemic acquired a personality of its own. Culture, language and art made space to accommodate this new entity. Leaving its muddy footprints all over 2020 like an unpleasant guest, Covid-19 first inspired fear and despair, and later, a kind of bewildered acceptance. Once we started to live with this new reality, its peculiarities began to stain our worldview. What does family mean without togetherness? Can we learn to live with loneliness? How do we show gratitude for the unlikely gifts of 2020? We asked some photographers and artists how they interpreted the seasons of the past year through their work. Together these images form a portrait of a pandemic that bound us together, even as it forced us apart.
Each work is accompanied by a note by its creator. Click on the box next to the image to read more.
“The initial months of lockdown skewed all sense of distance and direction. I was living close enough to my parents to spot their home, but further than I have ever been in every other way.
"I decided not to visit them through this period, which felt particularly surreal during the month of Ramzan.
"Instead, I borrowed a telescope and found it bridged the gap a little. I called Ma and asked her to come to the balcony. I was able to spot her--a white speck. This became a routine, even a strange mode of communication. I would make photos of her through the telescope, and she would make some pictures aimed in my general direction.
"In between, I found myself collecting pieces of the city that surrounds us. Otherwise receding images gained focus--the fact that we’re a port, or that the sea is never far. This is where my father went to work; these were some of the places where I grew up. All seemingly unreachable but carrying a sense of familiarity. Much like the moon. The moon that dictates the beginning and the end of this month.
"Maybe it is the strange solace we seek from traditions when times are tough. In the end they only fit right, together, in the lunar chart made over thirty days.
"This grid of images shot through the telescope is a map of many things, but most of all it is a way home.”
Hashim Badani’s work ranges across travel, fashion and documentary photography. He’s worked for the likes of Vogue, The Atlantic, Conde Nast Traveller and also created projects focused on his home town of Mumbai. Click on the label to visit Hashim's Instagram page.
“There are some visuals that re-visit you; from a film, a story or fragments of memory. Between these inhibitions and constant longing for hope in objects around us - in porcelain cups, paper boats, echoes of waves lashing onto the empty shores; there lies the story we know, the one we will never share.”
Nostalgia, evoking a sense of individual aesthetic and visual documentation form base to Gaurav Ogale’s work as an independent creative consultant, writer and artist. Through his most recent visual anthology series he has created visual narratives collaborating with iconic voices like Dr Shashi Tharoor, Zoya Akhtar, William Dalrymple, Kalki Koechlin, Lisa Ray, Manu S Pillai amongst others. Gaurav has contributed to visually driven publications and platforms like National Geographic Traveller India, The Wall Street Journal, TaxiFabric, Condé Nast Traveller, India Luxury Week and Pernia’s Pop-Up shop amongst others. He has been invited for art and research residencies and shows at TUL in Casablanca, 18 Derb-el-ferrane in Marrakech and Sunaparanta Centre for the Arts in Goa, and he will be the visual researcher-in-residence at Somos Art House in Berlin later this year. Click on the label to visit Gaurav's Instagram page.
"I've never been bored alone, I remember as a kid staring at my face in the mirror and laughing for hours…
"So I stopped counting the days and the minutes, time flew in loops and waves. On one side anxious, on the other looking within and realising there needed to be structural change. So 2020 wasn't all bad, it was a year of reckoning, of laughing at the self and not taking anything seriously anymore."
Pretika Menon is a photographer and art director whose restless streak has taken her on many journeys from fashion and fine art to social awareness. She is a storyteller inspired by stories from her grandmother, anthropology, cinema, music, street life and mental health. The characters she depicts are multidimensional and a conscious step away from mainstream advertising, towards visuals and aesthetics that show the reality of human nature. She has been published in iD Magazine, Vogue Italia, Vogue India, Verve, Grazia, Harpers Bazaar and many more. Click on the label to visit her site.
From his home in Goa, photographer Sephi Bergerson uses FaceTime to create remote portraits of people in lockdown around the world as a document of this historic time. Here’s what the subject of this photo, Vivek Raj Singh, shared with Sephi.
”To come up here is an instant mood-adjuster for me. For the photographer in me - the light here is always great, even when it’s not! The highest point of the building, and has the widest uninterrupted views of the city (here looking south). I’ve been in quarantine since March 17 and this is my closest ‘out’ from home since then. In lockdown there isn’t a better place to escape to.”
Sephi Bergerson is an experienced commercial and documentary photographer based in India since 2002. Click on the label to visit his site.
“The photo is of my friend, Rayit Qazi, with whom I spent the peak of the lockdown. I live by myself in Bombay, but when the buzz of a lockdown was in the air, I moved in with Rayit because I did not want to be stuck by myself. I had no idea how long I would be staying at his for and eventually ended up cohabiting with him for almost five months. In many ways, Rayit turned the months of lockdown and isolation into a time for introspection and learning. Being a filmmaker who hails from Kashmir, Rayit gave me access to some of the best of cinema as well as books to understand the situation of Kashmir better. This was also the first time in close to a decade where I cohabited with anyone else and alongwith teaching me a lot about my dear friend, I also learnt a thing or two about myself. This photo describes concisely what many of those evenings were like, with me cooking a meal in the kitchen while Rayit pored over his laptop to find us the best movie to watch over dinner.”
Anurag Banerjee is an independent photographer from Shillong, based out of Bombay. Click on the label to visit Anurag's Instagram page.
“We weren't meant to spend as much time holed up indoors without it taking a toll on our mood and mental health. I suppose that explains the general idea behind (and following popularity of) shows like Big Brother. When your surroundings stand still with little to no change or stimulation, it's the weather inside you that starts to turn. Creating turmoil, ups and downs reminding you - you're awake, you're alive and you need to feel. This self-portrait series looks at the rollercoaster that was the quarantine/isolation period for a lot of us. Some of the experiences are my own, most of them are all of us.”
Lavanya is a documentary and visual story-teller based in Mumbai. Shortly before the pandemic, she moved bags and cameras in tow from her previous home, Singapore, traveling across the Tran-Siberian route before making Mumbai her home. Using this time in isolation she decided to step out of her comfort zone and in front of the camera to capture the different moods and emotions one went through while being confined to our homes for an extended period of time. Click on the label to visit Lavanya's Instagram page.
“Amidst the many ways that this lockdown inflicted its damages upon us, there was an undeniable silver lining, if one was privileged enough. It was the unprecedented amount of leisure time that we got to bask in. Many a dreams of lying around the house and chilling all day were finally fulfilled, from the bedrock of which sprung up a multitude of new interests and directions. We are fortunate to have had this experience from a most unusual event- that it will always be the year we got a breather we didn't even know we needed.”
Richa Kashelkar is a self-taught artist based out of Goa. After completing architecture and practicing photography for ten years, she now dedicates her time to painting, as it allows her to express herself without restrictions. Coming from no formal education in this field, she paints solely what catches her fancy- which heavily involves nature, a deep appreciation of beauty, and an interest in the mysteries of life. Click on the label to visit Richa's online store.
“I’m sharing three photographs made at different stages of the pandemic and some thoughts about how these photographs came to be. If you read between the lines of my original Instagram captions you just might discover my state of mind – cocky, resigned and finally rather blasé – as the pandemic progressed. It was perhaps not very dissimilar to yours.
“[This photo] was before the pandemic officially reached our shores. I remember seeing mask-wearing travelers at the Bombay airport and thinking of it as a fad – the latest way to show-off the their recent foreign-returned credentials. At that time, I think, like many, I too was thinking of the virus as a phenomenon that is unlikely to ever affect me.”
Instagram caption: “Flying in the time of Coronavirus. Spotted an unusually high number - high enough for it to catch the eye - of passengers at the Mumbai airport and on my flight to Calcutta sporting masks.”
In his two-decade career, Chirodeep Chaudhuri has worn many hats – starting out in advertising as a visualiser, then switching careers as a photojournalist and later an Editor of Photography. His most recent avatar has been as the author of the critically feted book ‘A Village In Bengal: Photographs and an Essay’, a result of a 13-year-long engagement with his ancestral village in West Bengal and his family’s nearly two-century-old tradition of Durga Puja. Chirodeep lives in Bombay and divides his time between his various teaching assignments and photographing subjects as diverse as café sitters, abandoned helmets and the disappearing world of the typewriters. His book on manual typewriters has been published recently. Click on the label to visit Chirodeep's Instagram page.
“We were just a month into the nationwide lockdown. For many, like me, standing in queues to buy provisions became the norm. Readers of my vintage may remember standing in ration shop queues as a child. Cleaning their own homes, a job for which most Indians have housemaids, became part of our daily routine. What, till then, seemed like a temporary experience of inconvenience eventually got too back-breaking. In the months to follow, many would start to say that it wasn’t really necessary to do the daily jhaadu-poocha. But, by end April, I had already started to spot a large number of such mops on sale outside shops and more shoppers buying them than I had ever seen before. This observation was also mentioned by the departmental store manager.”
Instagram caption: “The vertical mop - possibly the hottest selling household appliance in this time of a pandemic.”
“This is from a time when much of the lockdown restrictions had been lifted or relaxed. The term “new normal” which had entered our vocabulary during the pandemic. After almost 8 months a sort of fatigue had started to set in. The term “new normal” was also beginning to get on people’s nerves. But some things had to be done. The importance of safety routines could not be ignored.”
Instagram caption: “The new normal. The new security guard. The new lathi.”
Portraits of a Pandemic
As it floated insidiously into our midst, gained a foothold in our consciousness and slowly expanded to fill our entire worldview, the coronavirus pandemic acquired a personality of its own. Culture, language and art made space to accommodate this new entity. Leaving its muddy footprints all over 2020 like an unpleasant guest, Covid-19 first inspired fear and despair, and later, a kind of bewildered acceptance. Once we started to live with this new reality, its peculiarities began to stain our worldview. What does family mean without togetherness? Can we learn to live with loneliness? How do we show gratitude for the unlikely gifts of 2020? We asked some photographers and artists how they interpreted the seasons of the past year through their work. Together these images form a portrait of a pandemic that bound us together, even as it forced us apart.
Each work is accompanied by a note by its creator. Click on the box next to the image to read more.
'30 Moons Apart' by Hashim Badani
"I decided not to visit them through this period, which felt particularly surreal during the month of Ramzan.
"Instead, I borrowed a telescope and found it bridged the gap a little. I called Ma and asked her to come to the balcony. I was able to spot her--a white speck. This became a routine, even a strange mode of communication. I would make photos of her through the telescope, and she would make some pictures aimed in my general direction.
"In between, I found myself collecting pieces of the city that surrounds us. Otherwise receding images gained focus--the fact that we’re a port, or that the sea is never far. This is where my father went to work; these were some of the places where I grew up. All seemingly unreachable but carrying a sense of familiarity. Much like the moon. The moon that dictates the beginning and the end of this month.
"Maybe it is the strange solace we seek from traditions when times are tough. In the end they only fit right, together, in the lunar chart made over thirty days.
"This grid of images shot through the telescope is a map of many things, but most of all it is a way home.”
Hashim Badani’s work ranges across travel, fashion and documentary photography. He’s worked for the likes of Vogue, The Atlantic, Conde Nast Traveller and also created projects focused on his home town of Mumbai. Click on the label to visit Hashim's Instagram page.
‘Afloat’ by Gaurav Ogale
Nostalgia, evoking a sense of individual aesthetic and visual documentation form base to Gaurav Ogale’s work as an independent creative consultant, writer and artist. Through his most recent visual anthology series he has created visual narratives collaborating with iconic voices like Dr Shashi Tharoor, Zoya Akhtar, William Dalrymple, Kalki Koechlin, Lisa Ray, Manu S Pillai amongst others. Gaurav has contributed to visually driven publications and platforms like National Geographic Traveller India, The Wall Street Journal, TaxiFabric, Condé Nast Traveller, India Luxury Week and Pernia’s Pop-Up shop amongst others. He has been invited for art and research residencies and shows at TUL in Casablanca, 18 Derb-el-ferrane in Marrakech and Sunaparanta Centre for the Arts in Goa, and he will be the visual researcher-in-residence at Somos Art House in Berlin later this year. Click on the label to visit Gaurav's Instagram page.
Self-portrait by Pretika Menon
"So I stopped counting the days and the minutes, time flew in loops and waves. On one side anxious, on the other looking within and realising there needed to be structural change. So 2020 wasn't all bad, it was a year of reckoning, of laughing at the self and not taking anything seriously anymore."
Pretika Menon is a photographer and art director whose restless streak has taken her on many journeys from fashion and fine art to social awareness. She is a storyteller inspired by stories from her grandmother, anthropology, cinema, music, street life and mental health. The characters she depicts are multidimensional and a conscious step away from mainstream advertising, towards visuals and aesthetics that show the reality of human nature. She has been published in iD Magazine, Vogue Italia, Vogue India, Verve, Grazia, Harpers Bazaar and many more. Click on the label to visit her site.
'Vivek Raj Singh, Mumbai, May 6th, 2020' by Sephi Bergerson
”To come up here is an instant mood-adjuster for me. For the photographer in me - the light here is always great, even when it’s not! The highest point of the building, and has the widest uninterrupted views of the city (here looking south). I’ve been in quarantine since March 17 and this is my closest ‘out’ from home since then. In lockdown there isn’t a better place to escape to.”
Sephi Bergerson is an experienced commercial and documentary photographer based in India since 2002. Click on the label to visit his site.
Portrait by Anurag Banerjee
Anurag Banerjee is an independent photographer from Shillong, based out of Bombay. Click on the label to visit Anurag's Instagram page.
Self-portrait by Lavanya Ullas
Lavanya is a documentary and visual story-teller based in Mumbai. Shortly before the pandemic, she moved bags and cameras in tow from her previous home, Singapore, traveling across the Tran-Siberian route before making Mumbai her home. Using this time in isolation she decided to step out of her comfort zone and in front of the camera to capture the different moods and emotions one went through while being confined to our homes for an extended period of time. Click on the label to visit Lavanya's Instagram page.
'Afternoon Delights' by Richa Kashelkar
Richa Kashelkar is a self-taught artist based out of Goa. After completing architecture and practicing photography for ten years, she now dedicates her time to painting, as it allows her to express herself without restrictions. Coming from no formal education in this field, she paints solely what catches her fancy- which heavily involves nature, a deep appreciation of beauty, and an interest in the mysteries of life. Click on the label to visit Richa's online store.
‘The flyer, 16th February 2020’ by Chirodeep Chaudhuri
“[This photo] was before the pandemic officially reached our shores. I remember seeing mask-wearing travelers at the Bombay airport and thinking of it as a fad – the latest way to show-off the their recent foreign-returned credentials. At that time, I think, like many, I too was thinking of the virus as a phenomenon that is unlikely to ever affect me.”
Instagram caption: “Flying in the time of Coronavirus. Spotted an unusually high number - high enough for it to catch the eye - of passengers at the Mumbai airport and on my flight to Calcutta sporting masks.”
In his two-decade career, Chirodeep Chaudhuri has worn many hats – starting out in advertising as a visualiser, then switching careers as a photojournalist and later an Editor of Photography. His most recent avatar has been as the author of the critically feted book ‘A Village In Bengal: Photographs and an Essay’, a result of a 13-year-long engagement with his ancestral village in West Bengal and his family’s nearly two-century-old tradition of Durga Puja. Chirodeep lives in Bombay and divides his time between his various teaching assignments and photographing subjects as diverse as café sitters, abandoned helmets and the disappearing world of the typewriters. His book on manual typewriters has been published recently. Click on the label to visit Chirodeep's Instagram page.
‘The shopper, 25th April 2020’ by Chirodeep Chaudhuri
Instagram caption: “The vertical mop - possibly the hottest selling household appliance in this time of a pandemic.”
‘The door attendant, 9th November 2020 by Chirodeep Chaudhuri
Instagram caption: “The new normal. The new security guard. The new lathi.”
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