Photography helps bridge the social distancing divide
Rodger Kingston and his wife Carolyn are sheltering in place. “We’re doing well here,” he told me. “We’ve got systems arranged for such things as grocery shopping, going to the pharmacy, post office, bank, etc.” The Kingstons, both in their late 70s, take social distancing very seriously whether running errands or taking walks around their neighborhood in Belmont, Massachusetts. “We feel as if we had targets on our backs and are being very careful,” he said.
Rodger has been a photographer for over four decades. Throughout those years, he’s worked on numerous documentary projects. Given the nature of the coronavirus pandemic—and his need to be extremely vigilant due to his age and health status—he is not able to document what’s happening on the front lines of this war the way he once might have. But those now-systematic errand runs and socially-distanced neighborhood walks allow him to focus his lens in a more personal way.
“In many ways this is a strange project,” he says, “What there is for me to document is the quiet, almost silent restructuring of our world.”
