Photoessay | quarantine
Three Gates Media
In June, near the end of the lockdown, I took a three-day photo-diary challenge.
Wednesday June 17
I go to work in the office.
Who would’ve thought a sentence like that would be so meaningful. I am no longer working from home every day. I am no longer working, studying, parenting, schooling, worrying, going to gigs and having meetings from home every day.
I still worry from home, if I’m honest.
I work part-time for the government in the arts. I am lucky to have a job. Many of my friends don’t anymore.
I take a photo of my hand sanitiser next to my hand cream.
It’s a memory marker. Something I will look back on and think how strange these times were. So much feeling bound up in these two objects, now a permanent fixture on my desk. Next to the mouse.
Thursday June 18
Today I work from home so I can stretch regularly in ways I can’t in the office.
I had a high-speed miraculously-not-fatal hit-and-run car accident in February, right before the lock-down. I walked away from it and still can’t believe it happened. It wasn’t just covid that took away my paid photography work. It’s been hard to carry gear and hold a lens up for long periods of time. But I can’t not take photos, especially now. In the lock-down I’ve been photographing people on their frontsteps. Mothers through windows. Portraits I’m calling Still Life. Even though I can only shoot for short bursts I need to do it. There is so much delicate and precious beauty in the hidden and seemingly insignificant.
Today I took a photo that still makes my breath catch in my throat.
But it needs a bit of background so I need to rewind three weeks. I went to a friend’s 40th dinner party. My first post-covid-lockdown outing. It was raining and windy. The legally allowed number of guests were clearly very happy to be there. We laughed at the irony of not hugging but sharing serving tongs.
I sat next to a man called Martin. He moved here a few months ago from Spain for a job. His wife and children were supposed to follow but then covid hit and they couldn’t leave. He misses his family desperately. He hopes they can quarantine together. His youngest is 21 months. I think back to when my daughter was that age and I understand how quickly the time goes, how much he’s missing.
A week later our mutual friend called me. She explained he arrived at the hotel, bags packed, ready to quarantine with his family only to be turned away. He was devastated. He waited so long to see them and now they were finally here, so close, and he is told to wait 2 more weeks.
To keep everyone’s spirits up, a group of friends gathered in the hotel carpark to hold up the letters of their names painted on cardboard. You see, Martin’s wife is called Mar and their two daughters, Martina and Marta. The family is like one big, beautiful anagram. Seventeen storeys up, in the tiny, airless, hotel room, his family would see how much he loves them. They asked me to take photos. I’m a sucker for a big romantic gesture. I say yes, of course.
Today is the end of their quarantine. At 10am, the normal hotel checkout time, I sent a message to Martin to wish him luck and apologise for not being able to photograph the reunion because I have to work. He replies to say it was postponed. Again. To 5pm. He says: it seems the virus is wearing a tiny watch, so it has to be at the same time they landed. My heart lurches for him. Then authorities postpone to 5.45. I ask him, how his nerves are? He replies, ‘Out of tears for the year’.
The postponement means I can be there. I pack my camera and head to the hotel to find him on the footpath, waiting. So much waiting. We walk to the hotel entrance. Security stop us. No one is allowed in, 17 families will be leaving tonight. He’s pacing. He has flowers for them. People start to gather. The energy is strange. Like airport arrivals but with two-weeks added anticipation. A person walks past the glass doors, it’s not them. Another. Some children. Not them. My heart is racing. No one is breathing. A woman walks past with a pram followed by a small child pushing her kid-sized suitcase. I feel Martin move past me, past security, through the door. He calls her name: Martina! Martina! The 6-year-old girl turns, looks for a moment, her backpack has fallen off her suitcase, it’s hard for her little hands to manoeuvre and I can see as her thoughts catch up to her eyes and her heart. She breaks into a run. He bends down, his arms open wide they land chest to chest, her on tippy toes. Her big, bright smile. He bursts into tears. She steps back, looks at him, hugs him again. She steps back, starts to tell him something about her little bag, stops mid-sentence and hugs him again. I’m crying behind my lens at the profound beauty in that little decision. Then Mar comes through the door having dealt with the paperwork. Little Marta in the pram with her rusk. Both parents rush to undo the pram buckles. He lifts her up and holds her. But I am watching Mar. I am a mother, a single mother. It’s hard, parenting alone. My bones know it. But this mother has had to shield her children for all those weeks in Spain while the world became a strange and constantly changing place. Then the long flight to Australia. Then two weeks in one room with two small children. The lack of oxygen. No respite.
She looks at him and bursts into tears. She buries her face in his neck and he holds them all. Finally, he holds them all.
This is why I take photographs.
Friday June 19
I take a photo of a sparrowhawk in my back yard.
