Portraits Of This Time: Faces of Lockdown

Ruddington, 2020

In March 2020 the United Kingdom went into a period of Lockdown in an effort to contain the spread of Covid-19, the Coronavirus. As the global pandemic spread schools were shut to all but the most vulnerable and children whose parents were front-line/critical workers who needed the childcare, offices and workplaces were shut down and the majority of the country were working from home. During this period the people of the UK were asked, then told to Stay Home to protect the NHS and Save Lives! 

In the middle of a period that can only described as unprecedented, communities banded together to support one another to help those self isolating, rainbows appeared as a sign of hope in windows and on walls and the nation took to their doorways to applause the NHS and critical workers every Thursday at 8pm.

I was desperate to bring something to help others, to bring some entertainment and joy but also to find a way of documenting this time through my photography. Portraits of this Time began with a simple idea shared on Facebook to create portraits of people in or outside their homes in a socially distanced world whilst on my daily permitted walk. 

I photographed over 125 individuals, families and households and the entire project hopefully provides a glimpse of hope, fear, coping and the lives of the people I met locally during this period of time in my home village of Ruddington, Nottingham to provide a documentation of the lockdown during 2020.