Where Do We Go From Here?
PHOTOVILLE, NYC, 2020

 
 
 

When it is the photojournalist’s job to document the world’s news events, what happens when a new, deadly disease spreads across the world and threatens nearly everyone and everything — including the photographer?

What should photojournalists say with their cameras during a time of unprecedented uncertainty and crisis? Do they look outwards or inwards? How does living in increasing isolation impact the work they make?

For photographers whose work is deeply rooted in connection to shared human experiences, what does sensitive storytelling look like in the era of Covid-19? Chris Hondros Fund posed these two questions to three photojournalists: In 2020 what did you see? Where do we go from here?

 
 
 

César Rodríguez

 
 

Before Covid-19, my work involved traveling to places that were unfamiliar to me and documenting the lives of other people.

Then the pandemic hit.

Assignments were canceled, travel restrictions were set, and I could no longer work. My wife and I decided to quarantine in our home in Mexico. We had always been private people. But as the depression of the quarantine set in, she suggested that it was time to turn the camera on ourselves, and in a way that we never would have done before.

I started to photograph our lives at home.

The silence here can sometimes seem more disruptive than the loudest scream. We have had to learn to be patient, to listen to our emotions, and to create something out of what seemed at first to be nothing.

Five months into the pandemic, I became ill from what we found out was the coronavirus. We could not kiss each other for weeks. We could not sleep in the same room. I tried to understand what it meant for our feeling of safety to have suddenly disappeared.

I know that in the weeks to come, we will have to start the difficult work of rebuilding our lives, but at least we will have the images of what we have been through and of how far we have come.

 
 

CONNECT

 
 
 

Kiana Hayeri

 
 

When the outbreak first arrived in Afghanistan, I went to a town on the Afghan border where thousands of Afghan migrants returned from Iran to escape the pandemic.

On one day in March, over 11,000 crossed. As I stood over a sea of young men inside the small immigration center, I wondered: How can I put a human face onto a pandemic in a country already ravaged by war?

Fifteen members of the Sayedkheli family crossed the border. I began to document their journey to their ancestral home in the northern province of Parwan. They had fled Parwan years ago for a better life.

Two brothers who had served in the Afghan military knew their future: Back to their uniforms and guns, back to war. But weeks after their return, they felt heartbroken not by the return to war, but by the stigma they received from the community for leaving Afghanistan.

“It’s a knot in my heart,” said Khaled, almost choking. “People don’t even want to talk to me from a distance because they know I have come from Iran.”

It is a double-edged sword, this pandemic ravaging through our world. On one hand, it pulls us apart with travel bans, social distancing, work-from-home and isolation. We sit six feet apart, pondering how to console a friend without embracing. We’re forced behind windows or mobile phones to watch loved ones take their last breaths. And we wonder if life will ever be the same.

On the other hand, this is the first time in my life that the world is collectively experiencing a crisis. It forces even privileged societies ― those that often observe “the pain of the others” ― to regard their own loss and suffering. To feel pain at its core.

This time is a crucial moment — a moment, that if utilized well, can bring us together. And photojournalists play an essential role in documenting this time with compassion and empathy.

 
 

CONNECT

 
 
 

Meridith Kohut

 
 
 

CONNECT