Lockdown Project

Pandemic: A Visual Diary of 2020

When the shelter-in-place orders were issued on March 17, 2020 I found myself, like many people, in a very strange new set of circumstances. Documenting what was happening suddenly took on a sense of urgency for me. I started by journaling but I soon realized that I needed to express my feelings visually. 

Just before the pandemic, I had discovered the Victorian Blood Book, a scrapbook created by 19th century politician John Bingley Garland which was later acquired by the novelist Evelyn Waugh and eventually donated to the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin. I found the book unsettling and intriguing all at the same time and thought that it would be interesting to create something in a similar vein. Serendipitously, around the same time, I picked up a tattered Victorian photo album that had been stripped of its contents for one dollar at a flea market. I wasn't sure what I would do with it but something told me to grab it.

As it happened, that impulse buy ended up being the perfect vehicle for my visual diary during the lockdown and beyond. I turned to collage and mixed media to express what I was seeing and feeling. To make things more challenging I placed some constraints on myself for the project. I decided to tell the story of the present using the visual vocabulary of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. At the beginning of the project, I wasn't sure I would be able to fill the whole book but as the year unfolded I found that the news presented me with more than enough to contemplate.