The SAR-CoV-2 pandemic is responsible for more than 3 million deaths worldwide. Its effects are long-term; it is difficult to know exactly how long we will be dealing with them. No one fully knows or can predict this. It was hard to predict from the beginning what the post-pandemic landscape of the globe would be, whether we would recover quickly. The most important thing was the reflexes of positive behaviour. Help, solidarity, a desire to provide relief to those most affected and heartbroken. Many did not know how to behave, how to deal with this sudden situation. After a few months of slowing down, we longed for the times before the pandemic, it seemed to us a ‘lost good’. We missed the most important things: direct contact with loved ones or other people, a direct handshake or looking another person in the eye with love. For the things that cannot be bought, the things that testify to the quality of life. Lockdown, made us realise how we are a society in need of social connections.
An intermedia exhibition using fine analogue and digital photographic techniques, the ‘Renewal’ project presents reflections on the encounter of people from a wide spectrum of society with SAR-CoV-2. What has changed in their ‘Inner Landscape’, in their lives , in their perception of the world, what has ended? and what has begun? Using the medium of image and word, I reach into these intimate spaces of experience to release them.
Wojtek k. and Agata W.
Covid chased me around a bit. However, we did not panic about total seclusion and isolation. We were very worried about our parents. Us Covid got us on Christmas Eve 2020. Although we spent it together with my in-laws, my partner and I were already infected, which we didn’t know yet. Right after Christmas we received a positive result. Terrible consternation and the question: did we infect our parents? They are both in frail health, so Covid infection would be very dangerous for them.
My parents did not get infected, and we went through home isolation covering New Year’s Eve hard.
The second feeling related to Covid-19 was the passing of my father-in-law. He went to the hospital healthy, but for a planned operation. Just before the operation, he was transferred to another hospital and it turned out that he was infected. The planned operation was canceled. He languished in the hospital for a long time. Access to his father was limited. After 2 weeks he came out, having escaped death. He was badly changed, weakened. The in-laws went with their grandchildren to the Baltic Sea. A full two weeks of idyllic rest. The father-in-law died on the first day after arriving from vacation.
He left a lot of festered affairs. All the time the family is recovering from his loss, because he was the real head of the family.
I certainly appreciated life and people. Although I got to know how frail and vulnerable they are. Me too.
