I have been thinking and photographing for the last 8 months about my experience of consulting as a doctor at home during the pandemic, and some of these images appear here on my site. I have found it difficult to find new ways to show that experience. Initial photographs taken at home or nearby did not adequately show my experience, and it was only with adopting a more abstract approach, encouraged by my degree tutor Gary Clarkson, that I think that I am now finding my way. 

The series ‘Shattered’ is based on a single shot of a broken flagstone in a hospital car park. I have used archive and other images to construct a series which is about matching images visually rather than on my love for a particular image or images. I think that this works well as an autoethnographic series using vernacular forms.

The staged images in my consulting ‘Room’ illustrate Freudian and other theoretical frameworks that describe adaptating to Covid. I haven’t labelled them here; there are tentative labels on my Instagram feed. These images more closely reflect some of my feelings about Covid, such as anger at delayed lockdown, the dismantling of Health Promotion and outsourcing of the work to private companies, the shortage of PPE, the deaths in Care Homes…

Sarah Hobbs work ‘Small Problems of living’ was a significant influence.

The series, ‘Power’ is based on the idea and practice of ‘assemblage’ as in ‘Mrs and Mrs Fork’ by Man Ray (1927) and the contemporary assemblage of Sarah Lucas. I am not settled on the body of work that I will submit for my OCA photographic degree but an accompanying academic paper is about medical dominance in image making and dissemination. These constructed images are a challenge to medical and governmental dominance and power, or are whimsical or something else. 

As this is a work in progress these images may change or I will do something different to show what I think and feel about ‘being in Covid.’