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Notes from the Pandemic: Chapter One: These Days

  • OneThe Beginning. March 15, 2020“These Days,” a visual diary, begins here, in my kitchen on Sunday afternoon, March 15th as the world continues to close down – and as I find myself drawn to photographing and writing about hearts that are opening up, including my own. My background is in journalism. I was trained in how to cover the news. And I know what the news images are out there – the empty shelves and lines of people with masks. I’ve made some of them, and posted them. And we need to see the news. It’s so important.But in the twenty years that I’ve been working as a documentary photographer and filmmaker, my work has become more personal, more conceptual. It’s still about social issues, but it’s driven by my need to understand how we define our humanity, and what the role of community is in helping us define that humanity. A friend of mine wrote a few days ago that pandemics can bring out the worst in people, the greed and selfishness. But so far, I have encountered kindness – strangers who post on neighborhood chat threads, offering their help to anyone who needs it; people checking in with friends they haven’t been in touch with for months; neighbors texting to see if I’m okay, if I need anything at the grocery store. (Toilet paper, please).And so I find that I need another way to tell the story of these days. It started here today in my kitchen, when I baked a chocolate cake. Chocolate buttermilk, with chocolate cream cheese frosting (my favorite) to be exact. I wrote an email to my neighbors, inviting them to come by for a piece of cake, to keep whatever social distance they needed – to sit in my garden and enjoy it, or to stand at my door while I bring them a piece to take home. I don’t know if anyone will come. But I needed to do this today, to cook for community. And besides, today is my niece’s birthday. More than social distancing keeps us apart – she lives two thousand miles away. But this cake is for her. I’ll blow out the candles in her honor and share it with whoever stops by or asks me to deliver a piece to them. Happy birthday, Principessa.
  • TwoInterlude (Two by Two)
  • ThreeBetween the Rains. March 20, 2020It’s been pouring in Los Angeles, off and on for days. To my mind, the rains started coming right around the time the coronavirus started becoming a topic of daily conversation here. Every time a new burst of showers starts tapping on my roof, I can’t help think about things being cleansed – and about the constant number one reminder to everyone, everywhere, to wash their hands.A photographer friend of mine in Jordan emailed me the other day from her home in Amman, where the government has told residents to stay inside. She spoke of things she’d read, about the pandemic being a result of humans’ massive interference with the earth and its ecosystems.“Sitting at home right now, looking through the window, streets are empty,” she wrote. “For the past few days it's raining and thunderstorms, I wonder if it’s Mother nature taking matters in its own hands, washing away everything, protecting us again. Once again I say it all fits in.. as we wait for the aftermath of all this, I can’t help but be hopeful that at the end, like after a fire, the land will live to produce again.”There was a short, sharp outburst of rain yesterday and when I came out of my studio into the garden, the sun was shining brilliantly, everything green and bright and wet. I think my friend, Nadia Bsesio is right that the land (that we humans) will live to produce again. Happy first day of spring, Nadia, from Los Angeles to Amman.
  • FourInterlude (Blue)
  • FiveI Did Not Make This Photo. March 21, 2020Forrest, the teenage-almost-adult son of my friends Danny and Lydia made this photo. I was texting with him and his sister, Tatum. I knew they were on a long drive home to Iowa, heading back from a family vacation that had been marked by the onslaught of the coronavirus. I asked Forrest and Tatum what the view from the back seat looked like. Within seconds, Forrest sent me this photo. In it, you can see Tatum, who has either just sent, or is about to send, her photo of her back-seat-view to me. I love it, partly of course because I love them, but also because it’s such a marker in time – a time of disruption in the history of humanity, a moment in time of a road trip that is already hours long, a moment of their childhood receding in the rear view mirror.Their father, Danny, who is a photographer, made an entirely different set of photos of his view from the car window, a poetic and personal view of trees flashing by, his response to the corona-changing world around us. He was bothered at first when I told him what his kids had sent me; he thought they should be looking out, aware of the urgency of these days, instead of looking in. I said I thought Forrest’s photo was exactly what it should be, of a child feeling safe with his family in the familiarity of a road trip like so many other road trips they had made together over the years. Forrest is on the cusp of looking out, at a world that is changing by the minute, before he can even step into it. He’s heading to college (if it’s open) and will swim on one of the best teams in the country (if pools are safe) and will probably head to the Olympics one day (if they’re held).I think of Forrest a lot right now. I want the world to be right-side-up for him. I want that car ride to last forever. But I don’t, not really. And it won’t. And there’s nothing any of us can do but love him.
  • SixInterlude (Johanna)
  • SevenYou Know What I’m Talking About. March 23, 2020Still life with cats and unmade bed. At least I wore pants today and not pajama bottoms.
  • EightInterlude (Kristin)
  • NineThe Dogs. March 24, 2020I live on an urban mountain just north of downtown Los Angeles. It’s possible that it’s just a fairly big hill – I remember looking up what it takes for a hill to be considered a mountain back when I was in elementary school and I lived on a hill near the harbor – but since mountain is part of the name of this neighborhood, that’s what we call it.It’s always been a place where people are out walking. But these days there are a lot more people out, crisscrossing trails, stopping to watch hawks catch air currents and fly overhead, nodding at people walking in the opposite direction – or crossing the street to avoid them. Because everyone is staying six feet away from each other. Or more.Except the dogs. By some small miracle, some saving grace, pets aren’t known to transmit the virus. So while their humans stand back, I greet the dogs who are out walking. I scratch their ears. I laugh when they lick me. I rub my hands in their fur.Touch. It’s what I miss the most.
  • TenInterlude (Mr. Rogers)
  • ElevenInterlude (Morning)
  • TwelveInterlude (Pete’s Dreams)
  • Interlude (I Haven’t Had Much to Say)
  • FourteenInterlude (Red)
  • FifteenThese Days. March 27, 2020
  • SixteenZoom Laura. March 31, 2020Zoom meetings continue. And go on forever. Some of them, like this call with Laura, nourish me. A lot of them don’t. I’ve worn pants all week. It’s not that I feel like I should pat myself on the back, or even that the cats care one way or the other. I suspect it’s an indicator of something. I’m just not sure what.
  • SeventeenThe Light in LA. April 2, 2020Here, in the midst of these crazy corona days, there is magic. Socially distanced magic, but magic nonetheless. Here, in one of my favorite spots in Los Angeles, on the mountain where I have lived for 16 years now. Touch isn’t possible, I know. I think about a hug that a friend taught me in the last day or so before touch became impossible, before we really knew what was coming. It was a heart-to-heart hug, left side of body to left side of body, held for six seconds so that our heart beats would sync. We’ll hug like that again.But for now, there is light. Some of the most beautiful light I’ve ever seen in this city, for days now. We’ve started walking most days around 6 pm, just when the light is bending into perfect. We are a small group of neighbors, close friends. Lisa brought cups and a drink today and we toasted each other and the sunset.This is what I will remember when I look back on these days. This light. This evening. These friends.
  • EighteenThe Darkness in New York. April 5, 2020I’ve been talking to a friend in New York, a photographer. He’s been shooting dark, black-and-white photos of the intensity and pain and death in the city – photos he shoots while running miles and miles through Manhattan’s streets. It’s as if we live in two different worlds. And we do in many ways. New York is piled up on top of itself, no way to escape, no way to look the other way. I try to explain to him that in Los Angeles, it’s almost impossible to feel what’s happening. We’re spread out, in low-lying neighborhoods, and the city itself sprawls everywhere. There’s no way to track what’s happening. Except I can see it in Ashley’s photos from the city he knows so well, that breaks his heart with every running step he takes. I don’t think he would put it that way. He talks about exploring the darkest places of the soul, which I know he’s done before. I don’t know what to say. Except for this. I can speak to you in pictures, Ashley. I wish you this.
  • NineteenI Can Hear the Bamboo. April 7, 2020Dear Lou –OMG, I'm laughing out loud. I love ALL of this information. Thank you for sharing. Although if I have the pleasure of seeing Keith in a face mask, I'm going to know it's his favorite old boxer shorts..... and.... well you know. Hahaha.I feel your love. I return it to you. I agree that we have been extraordinarily privileged during these days. To be in the exquisite light of LA, to enjoy the rain, to take socially-distanced walks with friends in the neighborhood. I'm struggling to understand the impact, to think about it visually -- my photographer friends in NYC are struggling to maintain composure and calm as they face what's happening there. And yet here, we {quote}see{quote} nothing...I've got a visual diary that I've been keeping. I need to update it; I feel I'm moving into a second phase with the work. I'm starting to work on some reportage (safely) that's taking me a bit farther afield into the city.My own act of community has been to bake a cake every Sunday and to put individually wrapped pieces on a table in my driveway (with my studio door pulled wide open), so I can invite walkers to take a piece. I did it for three Sundays, but not this past one -- it was quieter here. I'm okay. I miss touch. Like you, I'm a bit of a hermit, so the solitude doesn't bother me.The silence these past few days has been extraordinary. I was on a walk, almost the only person out, just before the rains and it was so quiet. I actually heard the clacking of a stand of bamboo trees in the wind. And last night, when I went out to put some trash in the garbage bin, the silence was so loud you could hear it. I have never in my life heard such silence in LA. And I grew up here.No pressure from me on the mask. I will look forward to it whenever it rolls off the assembly line.xxoSaraPS I think once it is safe to gather in small groups again, we will have to have another dinner in my garden....
  • TwentyWe Howl at 8 pm, April 8, 2020The first time I heard it, I thought it was kids driving in the empty streets, blasting music out a car window. It’s been so quiet at night that any loud sound feels like an intrusion. But then I stopped and really listened. And opened the big, sliding glass door to my garden. And I realized what the sound was -- people all around the mountain, woo-ing and beating buckets and howling, their cries bouncing off the mountain ridges and echoing through the canyons. I raised my hands to my mouth without even thinking and howled back to them, to all the neighbors I’ve never met, the people to whom I’m strangely connected these days. I howl into the night air, thinking of all those sound waves reaching out, wondering how far they will travel, exactly where and when they will fade away, while a traffic light turns green on an empty street somewhere.In New York City, I know they open their windows at 7 pm and call out in appreciation of the health care workers who navigate what most of us never will. Friends have told me how moving it is. Here in LA, as far as I know, we just howl. To say we’re alive. To express frustration. To say I hear you. To say I’m here. To say I’ll see you on the other side.
  • Notes from the Pandemic
    • Chapter One: These Days
    • Chapter Two: (Not) Being There
  • (Re)Thinking the Male Gaze
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