Reflections

The Window Portrait Project concept was pretty simple: use my camera lens to make connections during the isolation and disconnection I felt and the we collectively experienced during quarantine. My work life was on hold, but as time passed, the project organically evolved into more than I could have imagined at the outset. Desperate to connect with others but frightened of the dangers of physical contact, I knew my camera was a way to at least document this unprecedented time in history. It started when started noticed the neighborhood kids looking out through their windows, and I was so moved by what I saw. I knew their innocence, experiences, how they were surviving this was what I wanted—even needed—to record. After posting a few images on social media, I was inundated with willing subjects, and I used the traffic to raise some money for our local library to launch storytime online. My own feeling of disconnection started to evaporate even though the pandemic raged. Some days I saw the endless blue sky, budding leaves, and the America I wanted to live in the reflections off the glass barriers my subjects were behind. I could see that these portraits were revealing the persona but also the universal. The inside and the outside of the collective trauma. Then George Floyd happened, our capital was stormed, and as the country began to open, we added mass shootings and rampant crime to our daily intake of negative news. I started to see the disenfranchisement and hopelessness of the masked essential workers, families of color, and Generation Z and realized that my project needed to include these more complicated issues and capture the zeitgeist of our time. Though barriers may seem to separate us, the humanity can be felt across them. The glass, screens, and curtains are a fitting metaphor for what only seem to keep us apart. Whether in the gaze of my subjects, or a sudden grin, or in their tears, these images convey longing, love, loss, bewilderment, grief, and also sometimes hope. It’s my hope that this project helps others to remember what we felt and what we survived and gives witness to the dignity and beauty that was also part of this chaos.