Contacting COVID-positive patients
I left my life in New York to move back in with my parents in suburban New Jersey March 12, the day NYU began holding classes over Zoom. With enough anxiety about moving home and the spread of the virus, my grandfather died a day earlier, creating a surreal household environment.
Typically, the natural state my psyche has consistently begged for is isolation. The romantic notions of existential dread while isolated in Manhattan was something I cherished. The first two months of quarantine in Wyckoff, NJ with my brother and parents was far from that experience. My father, an ophthalmologist, became incredibly paranoid and consumed with COVID-19. Multiple phone calls a day about the death of patients he fondly remembered and his best friends on the front lines crying over the lack of PPE, put my father in a dark space. My mother, along with the rest of my family, was grieving my grandfather, without the ability to have support from our friends and family including holding a shiva.
As each day passed, the uneasiness of suburbia became more prevalent. Wyckoff is located in Bergen County, the hardest-hit county in New Jersey with over 18,000 cases. Without the ability to shoot New York to process my relationship with myself and the pandemic, it became a catalyst for self-destructive thoughts. The result is a collection of photographs depicting the grief of my grandfather and the world within alienating suburbia.