Photographer Lucas Creighton left his place in New York for Oregon when the lockdown first began. “I wanted to wait out the virus here with my family,” he says. “My girlfriend is back home quarantining with her family as well, and I think we both thought that this thing wouldn’t last for the extent that it has when we said our see-you-soons in New York.” A couple months later and his hometown, Portland, looks very different. Lucas was quick to begin shooting the effects of social distancing, but his first rolls of film never made it back from the lab. “So I ended up reshooting my whole photo set.”
With his new story, Lucas wanted to convey the complexity of emotions felt at this point in America. “I intended for it to feel snapshot-esque and somewhat playful, yet still acknowledging the situation at hand,” he says. “I wanted to show the stark dichotomy between innocent stay-at-home activities and the horrible realities of the world right now, and have those two things acknowledge each other.” A collage of various Portland movie theatres, churches, hospitals, venues, schools, restaurants, and other local businesses “all display messages that are a result of COVID-19 shutting them down, or forcing them to accommodate the situation”, while images of his grandmother and girlfriend reflect “one of the hardest aspects of this whole thing,” the distance away from the people most important to you.
“The only time I get to spend with my 90-year-old grandmother is during the exchange of groceries I make with her at her apartment,” he adds. “She lives alone, and has been holed up in her apartment for almost two months now.” He also captured his own “breaking point”: “I had my dad give my hair a much needed trim”.
Credits
All images courtesy Lucas Creighton