Last modified: 2022-06-24
Abstract
In the United States, the COVID pandemic quickly transformed from a shared crisis to one that allowed some individuals to avoid the risks that for others were disproportionately increased. By early 2021 when research for this paper was conducted, the “portal” Arhundati Roy described to capture the possibility of collective realization that the system must be totally remade (2020) had receded from view as repeated evidence of the crises of structural inequality and the undeniable recognition of the pandemic’s disproportionate toll on individuals minoritized by race, class, citizenship/nationality, gender or intersectional combinations of those factors was overwhelmingly obvious to many people who could see it. This project draws on visual methods to capture the everyday small scenes and details in a moment of isolation to create a multiplicity of images of the moments of crises as differentially experienced: a future archive of the ordinary in an extraordinary time. Examining images of the experience of multiple crises in individual lives through what I call photo-dialogues, this project explores the role of ambiguity, aesthetics, metaphor and visual evidence in representing, creating knowledge, and responding to crisis.