Published February 2021

This series of film photographs taken over the course of the fall and winter of 2020 in New York, acts as a therapeutic effort to leave my apartment despite concerns about the coronavirus and reignite my extroverted nature by capturing people out and about. The subjects of the photos are at a distance, often with their back turned or faces in shadow and masked, unrecognizable. The separation of their bodies from me as the photographer is literal, for safety, and also emblematic of the ever widening gulf I feel between myself and our return to a sense of intimacy in public spaces.

These photographs recapture the magical safety of being alone in a crowded museum, movie theater or subway stop. By not making myself known as the photographer, I am still afforded the luxury of observation without bearing the burden of intrusion. I am still a part of society, the outside world, without putting myself or my subjects in danger of confronting our proximity to each other.

Additionally, the black and white composition serves as a harsh boundary between the subject’s body and their surroundings. There are lines we must obey now that didn’t exist or were blurred before: six feet between each other, masks around our mouths and limited time spent in enclosed spaces. In the black and white, I want to highlight the building of those boundaries while considering the anxiety they create when we are used to the grey area of bumping into each other’s space, of saying “excuse me,”, of having to squeeze through openings between bodies.

Now, instead, we are alone on park benches, public transportation, the street, and in parks and malls, always making sure there is distance, forcing ourselves to be separate, checking around us for intruders and constantly watching our backs and our bodies.