Social Distance by Fran Monks

I have found many of the photographic images on the BBC website really interesting during the Coronavirus lock down.  I was particularly taken by an article today about a freelance photographer, Fran Monks.  Having her photographic commissions postponed by lock down, portraiture, she set about using her skills to capture something of the reality of people in lock down.

Monks has photographed people in their lock down environment, working with the subject to set up the scene remotely via their computers, and then photographing her screen to achieve the final shot.  She includes the black border of the computer screen to give a sense of the experience of taking photographs in this way.  It reminds me of the work of Shizuka Yokomizo, Dear Stranger (1998-2000) that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, where people were asked to stand in their windows while he took their photographs.

I love these images, and kept returning to have another look, before posting this blog.

Why?  I think it is the story-telling of a quite extraordinary situation that we can all relate to.  I like the fact that Monks has given a wider context of the homes in which people live and a sense of their personality through the different staging of the images. She takes account of the subject’s lives prior to lock down, in terms of what their occupation might be, and where they might live.

A fascinating and very creative project.

 

References

BBC Website In Pictures.  Coronavirus:  Isolation portraits over the Internet.  15 April 2020 [Accessed on 15 April 2020].

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-52284371