Sars-Cov-2

It all happened so suddenly.

So much so that I didn't have the capacity or the calm to invent a rational explanation or to seek it in the words of others.

Suddenly everything went dark.

Like someone had flipped a switch.

Those who are honest will admit it even to this day.

It's hard no matter how ingenious you are to manage the time that a short while ago you didn't have.

You could say that this time is creative.

But is it?

You turn round and round in a permanent confrontation in a war with yourself with your choices.

You refuse to allow yourself to dream without boundaries and find yourself unable to create.

Not a lot changed for me.

I continued to live with my sister to watch films to read books to spend my time.

But not with the same engagement and passion as before.

I was constantly in a rush wanting to be always busy.

No inspiration to be found.

I ate well saw friends went on walks.

I too went to parties broke the law to see where it would take me.

Mental fatigue had already overcome fear.

I started to follow the news in order to feel that something was happening something was moving in all this standing still.

I went to the seaside and pondered for hours.

life had motion and form; things I had missed for so long.

I culled everything in my life that I considered unnecessary – intangible and material.

I feared for my parents wondering what would happen if.

Elderly men and women appeared to me the most vulnerable the most fearful particularly waiting at bus stations.

I cried for people who perished all alone even though I had never met them.

I took beautiful photographs to contrast with reality.

Photographs of another life which was mine but like a set stage; a reminiscence of longing for home and pain placed within my own frame. Whatever I photographed at that time could never find a place in a coffee table book in an exhibition.

I would never allow it even if I were to share them.

I go on .

Empty streets; closed shops.

Police everywhere.

The sirens in the centre of Athens became ever more annoying.

Only in the centre's arcades where the wind threw dust on hidden neon signs, was any movement betrayed.

I remember the day of the protest march when a deafening roar hit my ears,

Like a flash-bang grenade.

Contradictory sounds that froze my body I broke out in sobs.

LIFE !

I started to observe people in cars more than ever before.

nom-masks

Only a glance remained to depict feelings: a smile a polite gesture a sense of fear or of

dread.

Handshakes were replaced by glances.

I latched onto those glances,

I sought them everywhere ; this was the contact I had missed so much.

I don't like to draw on collective pain in order to create; I like to photograph and guess; to makeup my own story one that covers my needs and softens my own pain.

I don't want to put titles, I don't want to point the audience towards my own chain of

thought.

I prefer to present it and the audience to interpret it however it wills.

What to photograph?

The self-evident? They are already clichés.

As you see, I'm writing about them.

A year lost; no hugs; no kisses; no laughing until you're crying.

To this day, I seek a word to describe this feeling of asphyxiation.

I haven't found it,

I leave it to the experts as we have left the fate of all our lives.

I didn't want to focus on Covid-19,

I didn't want to let it become a source of inspiration or creativity.

The way in which it was imposed upon us made me freeze and become immobile.

But unproductive, though I am,

I refuse to remain facing something that limited our lives, our dreams to such an extent.

I haven't been sick, but I have the most basic symptom:

I cannot breathe.