Front Porch Pandemic Portraits

• glimmerglass
• April 11, 2022May 5, 2022

Did I come over to your house in 2020 and take a picture of you and your family on your front lawn, back yard or your front porch during the pandemic? Although there were times we may have been worried about the plague, we sure did have some great weather for being outdoors. The Spring and Summer of 2020 were some of the best days to be stuck in the PNW.

Now that life has moved beyond a daily panic of pandemic pandemonium and we’re feeling more familiar with our friends again, maybe this is a good time to get some retrospective of what your life was like during lockdown. I may have mentioned back when I was photographing these that I was looking to compile a book of images with some stories. At the time of these photographs, we were all still processing information and brains were in survival mode. Now we can reach into our memory for the survival handbook, “how’d we get through that?” When we experience hardships, they can be a gift wrapped in hindsight that we can unwrap later. Times of trials can be beneficial because we learn from it. How affected were you by the restrictions? Was it anything more than zooms with mac and cheese dinners? I know that there were real disruptions and suffering and sad endings. But I know many of us also experienced moments of unexpected joys and new beginnings. Your stories can be as vague or detailed as you care to share.

Take as many of these cues as you want to share. Here is what I’m looking for:

• Stories that are exclusively true for you.
• How did your mind handle the “shelter in place” policy when you first heard it was coming?
  • did you panic
  • did you pray
  • did you make a plan
  • did you decide to get away anyway

• What went better than you thought?
• What went much worse than you could have imagined?
• Did you learn a new hobby?
• Did you start a new business?
• Did you move?
• You were okay but were others at home not okay?
• Others were okay, but you were a mess?
• Did you develop in yourself a new skill to handle things out of your control?
• What will you tell your younger kids about this when they are older?
• What is your best memory of being stuck at home for weeks with only your family, kids, pets?
• What would you like to forget about the pandemic?

Here’s what I am not looking for:

• Political opinions
• Conspiracy theories

If you would like to contribute, I want to hear from you! Send me an email with a summary of your time during the pandemic: SuzyPetrucci@mac.com

If you would like for me to put your front porch gallery back up to have another look, please let me know! And thank you so much for allowing me to visit you at your home and take your photo during those unforgettable days/weeks/months/years of shared misery.