The Lockdown Posts

Monday, March 23rd, 2020, the day all our lives as we had known changed. The Covid-19 pandemic had taken a foothold in the United Kingdom and the Government announced that Lockdown measures are to be put in place, forcing us to stay in our homes, bar essential trips to the shops for food and some daily exercise. Our daily lives suddenly changed beyond comprehension.

The mantra became

“Stay Home, Stay Safe, Protect the NHS”

Most people, like me, suddenly found themselves with more time on their hands. A lot more time. A time perhaps, to finally start some of the projects you’d been putting off for years. Social media suddenly became much more important in our lives, to help us stay in touch, communicate, inform, entertain and ease the boredom. For myself, it was a time to finally begin sorting out my large library of photos, update my software, improve my photo processing skills and make some photo books. I posted one or two pictures to Facebook, as I occasionally did anyway, but at the behest of my sister, it soon became an almost daily ritual. These would become my Lockdown Posts.

A snapshot of the Lockdown posts on Facebook

My first official Lockdown post occurred on the 1st of April, and I continued posting almost daily until the 5th July, 2020, although as Lockdown began to ease, so did I, so I didn’t quite conform to posting one image every day. The end date was originally going to be the 4th of July, but I extended this to the 5th which was the 75th Anniversary of the NHS; it just seemed more appropriate.

At first, the images were pretty much selected at random, but at some stage (around late May perhaps?) it just seemed perfectly logical to make them a subject of a book. From then onwards, some of the images were paired up and chosen with the book layout in mind. Many of the images are re-discoveries or previously unprocessed and long-forgotten images, but the whole process proved quite a voyage of rediscovery and quite a cathartic one at that. It’s resulted in a bit of a Hodge-potch of 90 images, but one that provides an interesting snapshot into my photographic body of work. They are all now posted on my Lockdown Gallery, and you can see them all together here.