Emily COVID-19 Photo Essay
Image One: A Birthday Present.
Lockdown began in March with the closure of schools and colleges. During the initial two-week period of what would extend to a six month void of time spent quarantining and only venturing out for essentials, my mother celebrated her birthday. This would be the first of several ‘corona birthdays’ I would experience. Being as we were entirely unwilling to risk unnecessary journeys – my mother being in the high-risk category – my brother and I made do with what we were able to put together at home. I happened to find a small rock while walking the dogs one day and seized the opportunity. A few layers of paint and an old ribbon later and I had a somewhat suspect-looking hedgehog.
Image Two: It’s Always Sanitary.
The base image is a screenshot from the show ‘It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia’, the caption originally reading ‘so anyways, I started blasting’. The headline is taken from a Sun (UK) article, and the image has been altered so the character is now holding a bottle of Dettol and a sponge and wearing a face mask. The article title out of context was humorous to me as it doesn’t instruct the reader on what to do with the bleach – something which, combined with comments by former president of the USA, Donald Trump regarding insertion of bleach into the bloodstream, was rather amusing to me when I made this meme.
Image Three: People Are Discovering The Countryside.
I live in rural Waterford, near the coast. The closest village is a mile away and the road forms a neat loop roughly two miles long. During one Zoom call, I was asked to remark on how lovely it is to see so many people out walking and cycling, to which I replied aye, I do love how they leave their rubbish strewn about the place. I have never seen rubbish along my road in quite the same volume as during May of 2020. The worst offenders were people who would throw their used masks on the ground behind them- and then remark on how dirty an area it was!
Image Four: Entitled Customers.
The image here is presented without context, but those familiar with this particular shot of former President Obama will understand that its use denotes the phrase ‘then perish’. The name ‘Karen’ does not refer to anyone specifically, but rather the stereotype of the white, upper-middle-class, entitled white woman – anyone unfortunate enough to work in the service industry knows them well. ‘Karen’ has become shorthand for the above – “Ugh, I had to deal with a Karen today” “Ew, you poor thing”. It’s used for many instances, but especially those too rude and selfish to wear a face mask during a pandemic.
Images Five, Six and Seven:
Theatre Kids Make Do (5).
Every year, Waterford Youth Arts puts on a summer show. This year was no exception. We arranged to hold it outdoors in Wyse Park, Waterford City, and to have a very limited audience all carefully arranged in ‘bubbles’. For six weeks, we worked up to twelve-hour days of rehearsals, masks on and hands thoroughly (and repeatedly) sanitised, in order to be able to bring about a full play, ‘Stolen Time’, written by Martina Collender and directed by Liam Meagher.
(6)
Where normally the show is held in Garter Lane, this year a set was designed by Deirdre Dwyer in such a manner that it would fit into the outdoor space. Combined with an excellent team on lighting (Richard ‘Lippy’ Collins) and sound (Heather Troy Whelan), we were right on course for opening night when new restrictions were brought in mere days from opening night.
(7)
Rehearsing indoors was unsurprisingly difficult. Anyone who wasn’t actively in a scene was sent outside where we could more easily keep our distance from each other. Due to the format of the play, a mix of ‘real world’ and ‘fantasy’ – it meant that people who were only in ‘real world’ scenes spent an awful lot of time getting to know the yard. Everyone was expected to wear a face mask, though face shields (as seen in fig.7) were also provided, and for optimum protection, we were encouraged to wear both.
Image Eight: The New Coping Mechanisms.
I haven’t spent this much time outside of any kind of educational setting since I started playschool, so naturally, my main goal was to not wind up completely ‘mush brained'. The first thing I turned to was Spotify, where I immediately got sucked into the world of horror podcasts. Netflix dominated my evenings, and when I wasn’t taking the dogs for their multiple daily walks, I was working on one of nine Duolingo courses – Irish, French, Czech, Portuguese, Polish, Dutch, Danish and German. A friend remarked that these seemed to be the three first stages of lockdown – followed by online personality quizzes, TikTok, ‘self-improvement’ (yoga, jogging etc) and alcoholism. Thankfully, I have so far avoided the last one.
Image Nine: God, Again?
2020 was a year that began with a horrific series of wildfires across Australia, a trend which carried across to the Americas, with Brazil seeing a huge spike in wildfires and the United States (according to some sources) suffering up to 10,000 acres of fire damage when a couple decided the dry season in an arid state was a good time and place to use pyrotechnics in a gender reveal. Originally the bottom caption read ‘Can I offer you an egg in this trying time’, but I altered it to ‘another wildfire’, as this template is typically used when someone has offered something either entirely useless or entirely unwanted to people suffering.