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.
Katarzyna Zalewska
The first observations are rather those sociological on a macro scale, roughly confirming earlier opinions about society: panicky on the one hand, insubordinate and unempathetic to those more vulnerable to the severe course of the disease on the other.
Another experience of the pandemic is the loss of earning opportunities, a drastic change in financial circumstances, but at the same time an almost incredible sense of human solidarity, neighborly help, opening up to new ideas, opportunities, seizing the moment and enjoying life in the supportive community of one’s own neighborhood.
The illness of a loved one is another point in this covid memoir: a sense of helplessness transforming into immense gratitude toward wonderfully benevolent figures in white jumpsuits stocked with IVs and other life-restoring miracles.
And finally, covid also became my personal experience of total powerlessness and dependence on others. It was a magnificently passed test of care and sensitivity by my sons, and – unbelievable to me – an experience of the existence of a whole army of amazing, selfless people, bringing healthy meals, walking my dogs and making sure we didn’t lack anything.
I think these experiences will stay with me now, reaffirming my faith in people who are always individuals, on a macro scale they exist only in the media, and that has nothing to do with real life.
