Uprooted: A COVID-19 Quarantine Shoot
COVID-19 has brought with it circumstances beyond belief. As our connections shift digitally, we naturally feel not only isolated but stifled. Limited to the digital space where we can gather in unlimited numbers and yet isolate, our interactions feel shackled and shallow. While our media for interactions may be limited by the circumstances, our time, ambition, and inspiration to produce are not. Challenged to innovate, creatives have taken the opportunity to express and draw inspiration from this unexpected uprooting of our norms, exploring new ways of interacting with subjects to create art in new forms.
More specifically, our COVID-world uprooted our constants--our routines. There are few things as ordinary as getting ready in the morning. Context is critical in style; we dress for events, of course, but also for image, and mostly, for dialogue. COVID-19 took part of that routine away, but there’s something we can make of the agency we have left. Capturing our current connections in their most genuine form, our models are outfitted in the clothing that made them feel most confident during the months in quarantine. They pose in places of comfort within the now limited spaces they inhabit. This platform that has become our unwilling default is now more than a mode of efficient communication. The digital world acts as a lifeline to human interaction in ways we would never have considered. So if our phones have become our friends, our work, our school, etc., they can also be a place to highlight and explore aesthetics and personal expression. We cannot ignore the new nature of our conversations, especially when the unusual circumstances that created them are those that most connect us. The Duke community has partially returned from its global disjunction, and while it remains fragmented, it takes on a new form, retaining its vibrancy. The word “connection” has come to signify something intentional that brings together the necessary physical and digital to preserve our emotional interactions. As we continue forward with this uncertainty and disconnect, we highlight the ways in which we are together right now, thus focusing on the tangible. Looking at the way that clothing can remain a constant of expression during an otherwise reflective time, we can come to better understand our common ground in this incomprehensible era.
While many day-to-day routines once taken for granted were compromised, Danny Wu gained a new family member in the pandemic: his foster puppy. As the puppy eagerly bounds into the shot, Danny, laughing, tries to restrain him from staying. But it is now integral to his new life in quarantine, and we couldn’t see anything more fitting to represent his new lifestyle than a shoot revised last-minute to accommodate it, just as were every aspect of his life in COVID-19.
Ghalia Bseisu has chosen to stay in her home in London instead of returning to Durham. As we select outfits that make her feel most comfortable in her new environment, we discuss changes in her life. She is able to spend more cherished time with her family members and reconnect with her London friends as she shares the experience of virtual classes in the digital space of Zoom with her classmates, an ocean away.
While shooting on her balcony, Milagros de Souza could not resist bringing her newly adopted plants into the picture. She has found it therapeutic during the pandemic to take care of other things and not liking animals, turned to plants. Even amidst a pandemic, she has continued to only shop secondhand for clothes, so the outfits are thrifted. Unlike before though, she rarely wears real pants. When she does it’s exclusively as part of comfortable jumpsuits. She admitted that she wears the orange one at least once every 2 weeks, but never out of the house. They’re too long to cross the doorway and Mila admits she’s too lazy to hem them, but wears them regardless.