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On February 11, 2021, for the first time in 335 days, my fifth grader walked back in for his last “first day” of elementary school. The night before his return I found myself looking back over the year in photos in my Instagram feed, peppered with tags such as #TheNewNormal, #TheCovidLife. After almost a year, I’m not clear if anything feels “normal” to me.
I’m a photographer and a writer in Columbus, Ohio, and a documentarian for my city, my home — sometimes with words, always with photographs. On Friday, March 13, 2020, the day the world seemed to come to a screeching halt, 13 people in Ohio tested positive for Covid-19. I was sent on a flurry of assignments to capture stories while I still could.
Half those stories never saw the light of day: the opening-day preparations at the ballpark that never opened, the sustainability initiatives of a local restaurant that has barely sustained itself, the toilet paper run at the grocery store and the book run at the library before they shut their doors to the public, and the final dress rehearsal for a high school musical whose cast members never had their opportunity to shine. By the following Monday, the number of positive cases had increased to 50.
