Portrait Projects
Between June 2021 and June 2022, while the world was still reeling from the Pandemic that engulfed us all, my husband and I traveled the Great American Loop in our small motorboat. This 6000 mile journey travels along the rivers, canals, lakes and intracoastal waterways of the eastern United States. Along the way I met many people whose lives were linked to the water and I was curious how they fared during the COVID lockdowns. I asked them: “what did you learn about yourself during the Pandemic?”
R, Dockhand, South Haven MI
I am not sure how to explain this but how we think our future will be, like we have expectations of how everything is one way and then the next day, everything is the opposite, just from one day to another.
I’m from the Dominican Republic and my country, we were locked down for almost the whole year. We couldn’t go out from 7am until 12, that was the time that we couldn’t go out. After that you could go out but if you went out during the morning, the police could put you in jail for one day but it was kind of stupid though because you were in jail among people getting the virus but it’s like that: you can have plans today and then the next day, everything disappears. Of course you need to have plans but when that happens, you’re like what I was working on and now I have to stop everything I was doing and then I lose everything or I lose somebody that was close to me because of the COVID so you don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow. That’s what I learned, like you’re here today, you don’t know where you’re going to be tomorrow. I was working from home and I had to stay the whole day at home from when I woke up to going to bed-for the whole year at home. So if you have something you want to do, do it today because you don’t know where you’re going to be tomorrow.