WOMANKIND’S Photo Challenge

Marnie Richardson

Day one: I go to work in the office. Who would’ve thought a sentence like that would be so meaningful. I am no longer working from home every day. I am no longer working, studying, parenting, schooling, worrying, and having meetings from home every day. I still worry from home if I’m honest.

I work part-time for the government in the arts. I am lucky to have a job. Many of my friends who worked in the arts don’t any more. I take a photo of my hand sanitiser next to my hand cream. It is a memory marker. Something I will look back on and think how strange these times were. So much feeling bound up in these two objects, now a permanent fixture on my desk. Next to the mouse.

Day two: Today I work from home, so I can stretch regularly in ways I can’t in the office.

I had a miraculously (not fatal) hit-and-run car accident in February, right before the lockdown. I walked away from it and still can’t believe it happened. It wasn’t just COVID that took away my paid photography work. But I can’t not take photos. In the lockdown I’ve been photographing people on their front steps. Mothers through windows. Portraits I’m calling Still Life. Even though I can only shoot for short bursts I need to do it. There is so much delicate and precious beauty in the hidden and seemingly insignificant.

Today I took a photo that still makes my breath catch in my throat. But it needs a bit of background.

Three weeks ago, I went to a friend’s 40th dinner party. My first post-COVID lockdown outing. It was raining and windy. The legally allowed number of guests were clearly very happy to be there. We laughed at the irony of not hugging but sharing serving tongs.

I sat next to a man called Martin. He moved here a few months ago from Spain for a job. His wife and children were supposed to follow but then COVID hit and they couldn’t leave. He misses them desperately. He hopes they can quarantine together. His youngest is one. I think back to when my daughter was that age and I understand how quickly the time goes, how much he is missing.

A week later our mutual friend called me. She explained he arrived at the hotel, bags packed, ready to quarantine with his family only to be turned away. He was devastated. He waited so long to see them and now he has to wait two more weeks. So, to keep their spirits up, a group of friends gathered in the hotel carpark to hold up letters painted on cardboard arranged to make their names. You see, Martin’s wife is called Mar and their two daughters, Martina and Marta. The family