Using Photography to Stay Sane

Creativity cannot be locked down.

It can be hard to appreciate what we have. Or what I have, because today we’re talking about me.

I’ve gone from living a boojee life as an American in Europe to being quarantined in the suburbs for, at this point, three months. As my colleague and friend Philip once told me, “we literally skipped spring.” We did, Philip.

Today I want to talk about appreciating shit that we normally don’t, because many of us (including yours truly) are going stir crazy and miss our boojee lives as travelers.

Being Stuck Is A Mindset

Yesterday I went on my first run during quarantine.

It was exhilarating to have left the house and move my body outside of it. I can’t remember the last time I ran. During quarantine, my “exercise” (if you want to call it that) is the occasional swim and constant walks around the pool. I was okay with this for the first half of quarantine. But between raging thunderstorms in Florida — it’s the beginning of storm season — and blazing temperatures when it’s not storming, it has become increasingly difficult to enjoy my monotonous walk around the pool.

It’s not like Florida truly followed quarantine anyways, because we’re fucking Florida. Do you expect any better from us?

Now that things are starting to open again, I still refuse to be a bad citizen and stop socially distancing. I’m continuing it because I not only want to save my life, I also want to not infect anyone else who engages with me. I’ve been living with my grandparents recently and the worst thing in the world is if they got sick at the cause of my wrongdoing.

Nevertheless, I started to run because it’s safer to do so than going shopping or other potentially crowded places — and I needed to get the fuck out of the house.

Later that day, a few of my high school friends and I continued our now what appears to be weekly Zoom sesh and Patricia noticed that I got some sun.

Score one for my typically pale self!

Being outside was fucking amazing. I couldn’t imagine a better feeling. After living in Washington, D.C. for four years, the winters were cold and dreary (you can say that year-round about the people) and it’s easy for me to get seasonally depressed. I vowed that I shall not live in a place with cold weather after D.C., which is a shame as one of my favorite American cities is Boston and it’d be cool to live there as a local. Maybe I should do that for a few months over a spring or summer. Who knows.

Running with my twenty-dollar wrap-around earbuds from China while jamming to Rage Against the Machine in the Florida sun was not only thrilling, but also quite liberating. I felt free with the trees, the leaves, and the grass.

Art Is Nothing More Than Perspective

One thing I’ve missed during this pandemic is taking pictures. When I lived in Barcelona, I took photographs as if they were my lifeline. Photography is my creative outlet outside of writing. And not being able to photograph during the pandemic sucks ass.

But wait, who told me that I cannot continue to photograph?

No one but myself.

It’s conventional to think that we should take pictures of things that others take: your local beach, your matcha latte, your avocado on toast. During a global pandemic, however, you cannot take pictures of any of those things. (Unless you make avocado on toast and matcha lattes in your beach house, not all of us are that lucky, though!)

One thing I noticed is that, as a very passionate person, my actions are largely based on my moods. If I’m anxious during the day, I probably won’t produce as much as I normally do. My thoughts are hung up on something else. And that’s okay, I’m a human being.

Yet we should not take this to an extreme. Just because I’m anxious about being behind on work (last week) doesn’t mean that I should let me anxiety take over my day. We’re alive on this planet for only so long, it’s up to me to be in control of my own emotions and do something about them.

I shouldn’t let any situation — even a global pandemic — from doing something that I love: taking pictures. Even if I’m not as happy as I was before, I shouldn’t view substances, for example, as a way to escape. I should get back to photography.

I’m not in the best shape and had only ran for two miles before stopping. I didn’t want to stop pumping my blood so I continued to walk and jam. Looking at my surroundings, that’s when I had a realization: although I yearn for leaving the house, I’m in a beautiful area with lots of green, blue, and yellow. I may shit on Florida a lot in my writing, but I come from one of the most beautiful places in America. We have the most beaches in the nation (Alaskan beaches don’t count), and I live where people vacation. How many people get to say that?

So what did I do after realizing this? I got out my phone and took some pictures!

Whenever I have free time, I’ve been devouring a shit ton of books. Recently I’ve been reading Sarah Frier’s No Filter on the story of Instagram, and the author made use of a prevalent theme in our era of social media: we capture moments that we aspire to be in. As you can see in my photography, I heavily modify my work. That’s because I don’t care about the whole “no filter” thing, I just want to take something I saw in the world and make it look beautiful.

In the case of this photo, that tree was not in isolation. Just below it was an uglier tree and below that was your typical suburban hedge.

It’s okay to not show everything, art is all about perspective.

This second photo particularly resonated with my mood: feeling strangled by the times. We all want to be the tree that outgrows our surroundings with a plethora of branches, yet we’re constrained by the pandemic among other things.

Photography For Social Justice

This last photograph I want to dedicate to those who are risking their lives protesting in the name of George Floyd, among others who lost their lives for no reason.

For too long, African Americans have been killed by the police while everyone else has passively watched. I cannot believe that we are sixty years after the Civil Rights Era, and times like today remind me of how much work we have to do.

Yes, we’ve made a ton of progress. But that’s a shitty excuse to ignore what’s happening in front of our eyes. It’s like telling someone “nice car” when it’s on fire. Sure, the car might be nice, but it’s on fire goddammit!

We need to do better as an American experiment. I hope photography can at least shed light on that.