Ming Chuan Tsai
(Bao)
Hey, I'm here
Coronavirus keeps us away from each other. No kisses, no hugs, no physical closeness. We’re all suffering from this tough time and all the changes in our life.
I have seen so many people feeling frustrated and struggling to adapt to a new life. But, there is more love and happiness between us. No matter we're with our family, our friends, or our lovers, I believe the connection between people can keep us brave and strong. There is always someone behind us when we’re down and says to us,
Hey! Don’t worry, I’m here.
Cyril Stephan
Isolated Reflections
For the first time in a while we are forced to face ourselves in our entirety. The distracting and fast-paced world we live in has been put on hold and we have been sent to our rooms. This combination makes for a time where we have been given the opportunity to be ourselves and to reconnect with our individuality. However, this process of re connection brings to light all facets of our individuality and makes us reflect on them, since all distractions have been taken away from us.
Isolated Reflections (series), 2020, digital photo
Lidia Varda
being near, being distant.
What does it mean to be near someone? Breathing the same air, enjoying the same sun, lying on the same couch? Perhaps no. Distance between two different worlds increases the more the two are physically near. Corona brought me closer to and farther from a soul I have never met. Our eyes, mum, encountered when I was born, but our souls never did.
being near, being distant (series):
touch me, 2020, 3753x5634 pixels
read me, 2020, 3753x5634 pixels
meet me, 2020, 3753x5634 pixels
Larissa van Beckhoven
DiStOrTiOnS
I am lost in isolation; I cannot get a grip on reality and normality. I feel confused, and constantly experience different dimensions of the same situation, caused by information overload, different extreme opinions and my own shifting perception of simultaneous normality and abnormality. I don’t know whether to be afraid for everything, or just merely annoyed by the way my normal life has abruptly ended. In this project I worked with the (felt) contrast between the notion of a large threatening something, and the invisibility and distance of the problem, resulting in a multi-perspective view on sudden shifts between the normal and abnormal, a crisis and almost-normal daily life.
DiStOrTiOnS (series), 2020, digital photography
Lasse Dietz
My project evolves around making the corona virus visible. In an article on the topic the author noted that compared to other catastrophes the virus is pretty much invisible and yet has similarly far reaching consequences. How do you photograph something like the corona virus? That is the key question I wanted to work with. I focused on the change in rules and norms visible in our society. The photos show the novel restrictions and borders. They capture my perception of what it was like when a small city such as Leiden shut all its doors. In some pictures the relation to the topic is quite straightforward; others are a bit more complex.
Lou Touyarou
One of the many things corona has made me realized is that beauty is everywhere. It can be in around you, in people, words, or even yourself. It taught us, and even forced us to slow down. Take a step back from the frenetic, never stopping world we live in. Instead, we have more time. More time to appreciate the ray of sunlight on your skin, or to let ideas grow, to get creative. More time, to just be in the present moment and appreciate the beauty of it. Even though this is a privileged perspective and not everyone has the chance to live the virus like this, it is something that was important for me to share.
Paula Ott
visualizing the invisible
it’s omnipresent
it colours our vision
shapes our experience
guides us where to go
or not to go
what to do
or not to do
yet
it is invisible
In this series I aim to visualize the corona virus while highlighting its invisibility. Using infrared light waves, which are outside of the visual spectrum, and microscopic images of the virus, I create a reality that exists among us but remains hidden to our perception.
Julia Diane Quist
time for a lullaby
maybe just to hold my guitar
allows me this moment
I've been procrastinating the world
and I can finally relieve a sigh
warm air rounds my back
in that round shape
the time melts
and I sing to myself a lullaby
Jenny Chuang
Our lives have been more or less affected by Covid-19, which basically ruined our 2020 so far. However, as time goes by, I started to find some light in my distorted, repetitive and boring life. Knowing there’s an end in this pandemic gives me motivation to keep sane and positive.
Life under Covid-19, 2020, digital photo
The Exhibition
#covid-19 #stayathome #lockdown
In the second part of the course Photography 02, students focus on a long-term project that culminates in an exhibition. Unfortunately, right at the start, The Netherlands went into lockdown and some students returned to their home countries (France, Italy, Taiwan). From then onwards, we met online every week and had very intense 2,5-hour meetings. Sometimes with bad internet connections and only voices, no images. Despite these difficulties, the group stayed strong and almost everybody returned to class each week to give feedback on each other’s work and to stay connected. It was wonderful to experience the dedication of the students and the progress that they made in this challenging time. My compliments to the students.
The students worked with the theme #covid-19 #stayathome #lockdown and created a personal concept within this theme. For inspiration and reference, we looked into the work of photographers like Roger Ballen & Asger Callon, Thomas Ruff and art-critic John Berger. The results are very varied. Some students reflected on what this period meant for themselves and created a project that is very close to their personal experience of the lockdown. Others observed how the society was dealing with the new ways of connecting and communicating, by going outside into the streets or by connecting online.
Ilse Leenders, Artist & Teacher
Jerry Weidema
Due to physical restrictions of the Corona crisis, we are forced to stay inside. University lectures and social meetings, therefore, have to be arranged online. All day I am looking at people's faces on a screen and I hear them talking through my earphones. What I don't realise very often, though, is that what I see and what I hear are not real people. It is digital representations of them. When I don't pay attention, the digital world fades with the real one and when I snap out of the digital one,it takes a while before I can see reality again. It's like exiting a cave and your eyes are burning when they suddenly get exposed to sunlight, but instead of getting used to the light, I have to get used to the high resolution of life, when all I had seen for hours were pixels.
The Computer Virus, 2020, digital image, dimensions 2:3, 16.2mb
God is in Quarantine, 2020, sound piece (mp3, 00:40, 1.3mb)
Joris van den Einden
01110000 01101000 01111001 01110011 01101001 01100011 01100001 01101100
01110000 (“physical” in binary) deals with interpersonal distance in the contemporary world. The project expands on the four types of interpersonal distance as discussed in the framework of proxemics – the intimate, personal, social and public. 01110000 considers a fifth dimension of space, in which distance is complicated as the result of modern technologies; while physically far away from one another, do technologies like video-calling bring us closer together? Or do they only create an illusion of close proximity?
This video is based on photographs of laptop screens during video-calls, which were later physically altered and manipulated. The employed techniques aim to create a sense of distance from the original image, and blur the boundaries between the digital and the physical.
01110000, 2020, video
Myrthe van Herk
Give me light, or I’ll go out
We are the spring. The light awakes us from our slumber and makes us grow until we shrink. But an everlasting cloud banned the light from coming through. Unable to grow we have landed in a time of loss, a loss of spring. For we are lost.
Geef me licht anders ga ik uit (Give me light, or I’ll go out), 2020, 1024 x 768
Kwijt (For we are lost), 2020, 1024 x 768
Verlies van de lente (Loss of spring), 2020, 1024 x 768
Kim Engels
DOES IT MATTER?
Our world is confusing. Sudden dissociation and recombination of our lives. We stay at home. The days are simplified and flattened. Looking out the window we see little change. We live, work, eat and repeat in the same room. All we knew was normal is suddenly abnormal. New wholes need to be found, starting from conception, forming a new reality. Our world is cubistic.
Does It Matter, 2020 digital photo, 50 x 50 cm
