This March, I struggled, as many did, to make sense or meaning of the disruption that the Covid-19 pandemic brought. With the immersive effects growing every day, it is hard to reflect or to get perspective on any sweeping truths, so I looked at the details. Starting 3/21/20, I began recording observations of life in the pandemic each day represented by an image and a short statement. Some observations are directly related to the pandemic, like new behaviors of bleaching doorknobs. Other observations are colored by the pandemic, where dead leaves become omens of our cat’s impending death (she passed peacefully on April 1.) Or where gas line replacement work in our front yard, seems more ominous than a reminder of our fossil fueled lives already is. While not all of the postcards are so bleak, I want to notice and cherish even the darkest observations. They help cut through the news to clarify what is most essential, and collect clues for future stories of what I learned.
These explorations, which are still ongoing, use what I call, “altered photo” technique, where I print an image, and change it physically, retaining the recognizable photograph (with it’s implied accurate rendition of reality), but using other media to alter that reality. In this case, I am altering the photo by rubbing clear wax over the areas of focus, sometimes more densely for more preservation, and sometimes lightly. Then I wash over the photograph with a sumi-e ink and water mixture. This wax-resist process, keeps the wash mostly off the waxed ares, but it can sink into the areas without wax. As I do this, I think about how the pandemic’s gloom can heighten awareness of details, and how it can ‘color’ everyday life with different associations (resilience, death, fear, gratitude, transition, etc.)
The image is glued to black paper on the flip side of the postcards, with the annotation written in silver colored pencil on a traditional postcard format. I don’t intend to literally stamp and send these to myself, but they are like a message in a bottle to my post-pandemic self so that I can get a glimpse of the shifts in my outlook before it becomes a new normal.