Alessandra Capodacqua, NYU Florence
The Spring 2020 semester was interrupted after three weeks of classes. The students had to move out of the campus and most of them were able to travel back home.
The transition to remote teaching has been abrupt, inevitably faulty in some areas. The students complained about the lack of a true local experience: photo shootings in the studio and outdoors for the Fashion Photography course, the famous field trip to Naples to document the anti-mafia movement and meet with local photographers for the Photojournalism course. However, those three weeks in Florence really served to create a bond and a commitment. The progression and the final results, now that we are approaching the end of the semester, really left me speechless with joy and very very proud of my students.
This is a selection of students who agreed to have their works published.
For Photojournalism every student found her/his voice in telling their own story, very often speculating about the COVID-19 lockdown. Through an in-depth research about documentary photography, street photography, photojournalism, counterculture, cultural appropriation, as well as the study of images produced in automated ways, such as webcams and Google Street View, the students have developed a body of work that reflects on our contemporary times, and asks questions more than offering answers. In particular, Olivia Tang, who is still in Italy, has documented her lockdown near Sorrento, in Southern Italy, where she lived with a friend’s family house, and still is, waiting to fly back to China. Zdravka Todorova went back home in Bulgaria, and since then has documented her daily life in a remote countryside. Ruyang Zhang, who returned to China and was in quarantine in his hometown, has documented what life is now that the lockdown is over.