Joy is visible during the pandemic, just not with the usual, recognizable cues. Is a laugh or smile any less heart warming if it’s hidden from view? Are eye crinkles the new prompts of a smile covered by a mask?
Associated Press photographers, tasked with reporting on the crisis, have looked for bliss, as well. And amid so much heartache and anxiety, they’ve found it.
There’s no mistaking the kinship between humans and pets in the image taken in Silvio Pettirossi International Airport in Asuncion, Paraguay. Dumas the Labrador doesn’t know the passenger heading to Miami, but they greet paw to hand and nose to nose.
Just being able to inhale deeply is a universal theme of contentment. In Beijing, after two months of staying inside, a man pushes aside his mask and throws his arms wide as he stands alone to enjoy spring among the cherry blossoms in Beijing’s Yuyuantan Park.
There is joy in marking milestones — and in the ingenuity it takes to do so, under the circumstances. Husband and wife in Annapolis, Md., marking their 56th wedding anniversary with a quiet at-home day of isolation, are surprised by family and friends with a honking convoy to celebrate.
And there remains joy in routine. Separated by balconies and ground-floor shouting distance, employees at the Vi at the La Jolla Village retirement complex in San Diego maintain nearly daily aerobics sessions. Senior residents participate from their patios, stories above.
There are other moments of exultation specific to this time: the ovations with which the public rewards health care workers for their kindness and courage, and their grateful response. Long after the words “social distancing” fade from memory, the sound of that applause will resound.
(AP/Ng Han Guan)
A medical worker from China’s Jilin Province (in red) embraces a colleague from Wuhan as she prepares to return home at Wuhan Tianhe International Airport in central China’s Hubei Province. Within hours of China lifting an 11-week lockdown in Wuhan, tens of thousands people had left the city by train and plane alone, according to local media reports.
(AP/David Goldman)
Mason Lambert, 5, looks up April 24 at the rain as he leaves the house with his grandmother Karen Lambert (in car at left) and mother Emilie Lambert (right) for his daily outing to one of the few public parking areas still open by the sea in Narragansett, R.I.
(AP/Jorge Saenz)
Dr. Rubinstein gets a greeting from a fellow American passenger’s dog, named Dumas, as people prepare April 23 to board a flight to Miami from the Silvio Pettirossi airport in Luque, on the outskirts of Asuncion, Paraguay.
(AP/Ng Han Guan)
A man removes his mask to stretch and take a deep breath across from cherry blossoms at the Yuyuantan Park in Beijing.
(AP/Gregory Bull)
Employees of Vi at La Jolla retirement complex hold signs and wave flags for the residents during an afternoon pep rally April 8 in San Diego. As elderly residents who have been quarantined for weeks make their way out onto their balconies, employees below dance, wave flags and shout words of encouragement in a now almost daily afternoon pep rally.
(AP/Esteban Felix)
A woman waves to a city worker dressed in a hazmat suit as he disinfects the streets in her neighborhood as a precaution against the spread of the new coronavirus in Santiago, Chile.
(AP/Jacquelyn Martin)
Desmond Peskowitz, 7, of Takoma Park, Md., pours a stream of water on his head from his boot as he plays a game he called “champagne fight,” inspired by Formula 1 Racing, with his mother Kathleen Caulfield, and sister Erin Peskowitz, 4, in Rock Creek Park in Washington. Desmond’s school is closed due to coronavirus precautions, and his mother said the park was their “PE class” today. “I don’t worry as much about germs when they’re outside,” says Caulfield, “the touching seems to be less when kids play outdoors.”