Picture a pandemic: how Guardian photographers adapted to lockdown life
Fiona Shields, head of photography
Throughout the pandemic it has been important to show our readers and viewers what’s happening in the world outside, to make a historical document and to chart the progress of those on the frontline. During the first weeks, it was difficult to gain access to hospitals to see how they were coping – until photojournalist Jonny Weeks was invited on to the Covid-19 wards at University hospital in Coventry. We made a full risk assessment, considering his safety and the risk to those around him, and with the guidance of the staff there he produced a brilliant photo essay. He was one of the very first photojournalists to have this kind of access in the UK and it was a key story for the Guardian.
Photographing people through windows, in outside spaces or from the end of their front path has become an accepted feature of this time, like physically distanced queuing at the supermarket. It’s remarkable how inappropriate photo-stories made before the pandemic now feel. Seeing people in crowded places such as music festivals, or people going to work – a time before face masks – has quickly become dated. Like our vocabulary, our visual language and practice has changed, for now.
David Levene, photographer
We’d all seen images of lockdowns in Italy and Spain and so had a good sense of what was to come. It was clear that the streets of London would fall empty and silent that first morning of lockdown on 24 March. In normal times I would have tried to find high positions to shoot down from but I knew that would be impossible. So I bought a giant monopod online, which thankfully arrived on the 23rd. The thing goes as high as a house with the camera popped on top, which I control using a smartphone down below. So I spent the first few days of lockdown wandering around with it flung over my shoulder, able to shoot desolate London scenes from above within moments from any position. The light was incredible during those first days and weeks, which only increased the sense of urgency to be out there shooting as much as possible. It felt like we were witnessing something unique in our history, which demanded thorough documentation. The days were long and I found it impossible to relax. Even when I got home I felt like I should be back out there photographing. I’d watch the skies from my garden and felt pangs of regret if I saw dramatic clouds developing, sure in the knowledge that I was missing some momentous, empty London streetscape.
Sarah Lee, photographer
I went into an early lockdown because my partner is shielding. But you can’t “work from home” as a photographer, so I started taking long walks around my home district, Camden. I’ve lived in this part of London for over 15 years, but having all this sudden time to walk and think and really look in a way I’ve never done before gave me a new perspective. I noticed light, details, and stark beauty in places I’d never seen carefully before. It was strange to do this work and to feel people were only distant, fleeting presences on the periphery of my attention. But that’s how the early weeks of lockdown felt.
I’ve worked for the Guardian and Observer for 20 years now, but I also do commercial work – one of my last big jobs before locking down was a Transport for London campaign that is currently decorating a transport network I can’t use – and personal work. I’m the sort of photographer who always carried my Leica with me and usually I don’t see the distinction between paid commissions and my own work. Photography feels like a vocation as well as a career.
Fears about the virus meant that for those first two months I didn’t take my camera with me when I went on my rather limited walks. It felt like a possible mode of infection; an object I constantly touch and then bring to my face. It’s the longest I’ve gone in my adult life without my camera and without photography. It’s been very painful and difficult.
Also I desperately missed, and continue to miss, the human side of my job. I enjoy the huge privilege of meeting so many disparate people and having the unique, brief insights into their worlds that being a photographer usually brings on a daily basis. I realise now more than I ever have before how these daily encounters give meaning to my life and also provide all the sparks that fire both my creative energy and my personal energy. Without that, life is flatter.
I did quite quickly realise that I had to continue taking photographs even if I wasn’t working and wasn’t able to use my “proper” camera. I did a series taken on my long walks round Camden.
As the rules have loosened a little and I’ve grown braver on my bike, I’ve visited friends outside their homes or in their gardens, and for the past few weeks I’ve returned to my proper Leica. My work is always about intimacy and connection, and as I’ve gradually started to take photos with people in them again, I’m glad to see that side of my creative personality coming back.
Going forward, though, I am extremely apprehensive. Photography is a competitive, anxious profession to be in at the best of times. But at the moment I feel I’m trapped inside an airless glass box, where on the outside there are signs of the world coming back to life tentatively and old connections being renewed. I worry I’ll have my nose pressed to the glass till we are safe with a vaccine.
Suki Dhanda
My biggest challenge, apart from keeping my four-year-old entertained, was getting my parents repatriated from India, which we eventually managed to do. Both are thankfully safe and well.
After a couple of weeks of lockdown work was very quiet, I was getting itchy feet and was desperate to take pictures. We were encouraged to think of stories to photograph safely that we could contribute to the paper. I decided to go to Slough, where I grew up, and photograph the local Asian volunteers who
were helping the wider community. I would follow the volunteers in my own car and take pictures of the vulnerable people receiving the donations – all photographed at a safe distance. The volunteers felt very valued when they appeared in the national newspaper and even more so online, viewed by an international audience.
Before the lockdown I would mostly shoot in studios with lights and a crew of assistants – makeup artists, PRs and so on. Since lockdown, I have been working solo and most of the portraits have been shot outside. I have sometimes set up a mini-studio with a background in people’s gardens: luckily we had pretty good weather. I must say I have actually enjoyed working this way, keeping things as simple as possible, just me and the subject.
Elizabeth on Clacton-on-Sea beach, for an Observer piece about lockdown.
Jonny Weeks, photographer
Andrew is clapped out of the hospital after spending more than two months there fighting Covid-19.
In the early days of lockdown, I was frustrated by the lack of coverage from within UK hospitals. Compared with what we were seeing and reading from Italy and the US, we knew very little of our own NHS. For me at least, this meant I had very little concept of the everyday acts of heroism being performed by NHS staff and I really didn’t have much of a clue what I was clapping for during “clap for carers” on Thursday evenings. I felt detached. I approached University hospital in Coventry, where I was born, and was lucky to be granted exclusive access to cover every aspect of their amazing work.
In doing so I was able to document many members of staff and their personal contributions – nurses and doctors in ITU, cleaners and charity workers on the wards. It was a huge undertaking and, given the number of deaths and the lack of access for family members, a story that had to be handled very sensitively. It was also a challenging assignment because I felt a weight of responsibility to my subjects and I was shooting in conditions that were frankly alien to me (trying to take documentary photographs while wearing PPE is not easy). Fortunately, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive: people valued the unique insight the story provided, they were comforted by the many positive stories that emerged from the tragedy of the pandemic, and they recognised that we had fulfilled our duty to our readers as a newspaper. It showed me that honest, respectful journalism can be immensely powerful. And I was quite chuffed at getting five pages of my work in the paper, too!
You can read our Global Development series Photographing the Pandemic, here.
totle’s idea that happiness depends on carving out virtuous habits, to the Buddhist notion that controlling craving can reduce suffering. Santos is searching for empirical proof, often from other researchers, that these techniques work and is putting a modern, scientific, spin on them. She’s currently compiling data from students who’ve taken the course. Generally, she says, they do report increases on wellbeing measures at the end.
There’s also a debate to be had about the extent to which our happiness is limited by the society we live in. In the last few decades, data suggests attitudes on what we find important have flipped; where most American first-year students prioritised developing meaningful life philosophies in the 1960s and were less interested in money, for example, more recently they cited becoming rich as a more important life goal. Santos feels such cultural values are problematic for our wellbeing. Economic disparities, racism and polarisation, she argues, aren’t only responsible for inequalities and persecution, they also fuel mental health problems and go against the happiness research, which suggests that connecting with other people – including those different from ourselves – and helping them is important.
Santos remains cautiously hopeful. “There are lots of forces pushing us in the wrong direction,” she says. “There is something broken in our society and I think a lot of people are realising that.”
Her next mission is to create a happiness course for high-school students (for which she recently got funding), with modules for parents, to curb child mental health problems and push more structural changes. “I think this might be another thing like climate change, young people fighting for change. Ultimately, it’s going to be their world down the line. If we can teach them the right way to do stuff, maybe they will make societies that are a little bit better.”
In the meantime, Santos believes the pandemic can catalyse some of the individual changes she’s proposing. “It’s an awful crisis and that’s not to belittle it,” she says. “But I think there are blessings in the middle of this.” She bolsters her conviction with research. For instance work by Professor Katherine Milkman of the University of Pennsylvania on how momentous times in our lives can create a fresh-start effect, motivating us to instil new habits, see time differently and take a broader view of our lives. Other research which should give us hope is on post-traumatic growth, the idea that crises can fuel transformations. Following them people often become more resilient, with deeper social connections, greater spirituality and clarity on how to live. In certain senses, they’re often glad for the experiences.
In her own life Santos is seeing shifts too. Her mother suffers from a chronic lung condition; now that she can’t visit her, she has been questioning why she didn’t do so more before and wants to make this a priority in future. For all the recent doom, many of us will have had similar thoughts about what we find meaningful. “The hope is,” Santos says, “once we get back [to our post-pandemic lives], we’ll really be able to value what matters and really enjoy what we took for granted before.”
We have intuitions about happiness that are wrong