Modern Hunter Gatherers

This series of portraits are part of my response to the Covid 19 initiated lockdowns.

The Covid-19 pandemic is a significant moment in all our lives. Seeing the images of customer queues in supermarket car-parks – all standing ready with masks, gloves, bags, disinfectant wipes – reminded me of hunter gatherers, ready with their tools to collect berries, gather wood and defend themselves against threats. (read individual captions for each image)

The resulting lockdown with its new rules of social distancing and isolation has meant that basic daily needs, like acquiring food and essentials, suddenly need to be revised. Many things we took for granted have been taken away or at least made harder to obtain. The panic buying and empty shop shelves caused by the pandemic triggered a very primal instinct within me. I immediately started to network with people in my social circle, to source places I could order this box of fresh fruit or that bit of cheese. I ordered seeds and started growing vegetables. I stood in online queues for hours, only to find no more delivery slots were available and my precious time had been wasted. All in all, I spent so much time in pursuit of necessities that I started to feel like a hunter.

I started to accumulate new wisdom through these experiences and shared them with my neighbors. We all started to order for each other, and provide and even make deliveries for the local Covid-19 Mutual Aid group. It is the shift in priority caused by the virus that makes these two very different moments in time close in on each other.

I photographed these people in my makeshift black back drop “studio” with natural light. I wanted each one of them to be isolated in this black space with not much definition because everything feels yet undefined and unclear. We are apart and yet we have never in my lifetime had more obvious proof on just how connected we are.

All photographs have been taken in London between the 28.05 – 26.06 2020

Jennifer Keegan

At first, I was so reluctant to go outside that I stayed in for three weeks until I ran out of food. I had to start counseling because it just got a bit way too much for me. The councilors talked to me about actually having to go outside and reassured me that my feelings were valid and important.

I was mainly stressed about my housing. I had to move out of my flat and to a temporary place at the height of lockdown. Now I wondered how long it will take for services to go back to normal. When am I going to get my housing sorted out by the council which I am owed as care leaver? Where am I going to live next month?

Afsha Mohamed

“A friend of mine suggested in mid-March that we make some emergency food packs to give to local elderly and vulnerable people we knew. We had enough food to make 25 packs but only needed 20. I put the remaining 5 on the Lambeth Mutual Aid group and after that I just had a lot of people requesting packs and making referrals and it just continues on from there. Neighbours are dropping off food donations and deliver the packs to people’s front doors once they are ready. With our food packs we are trying to cover an emergency situation, for people with no other alternative.”

Camilo Castro

“My wife has asthma. At the beginning we were a bit worried as this is an underlying issue, but now it seems that not many people who have died from Covid-19 had asthma.”
“People are talking to each other more on our street. We are knocking on each others’ doors and making sure everyone is alright.”

Catherine Birkitt

Mainly relies on deliveries to get her necessities. Because of her knee problems, standing for a long time is too painful and damaging. She was supposed to have surgery on her knees in autumn, however that got postponed to next year due to the drastic reduction of available hospital operating theatres.
Biggest hope: “A vaccine so that this virus will go away and some positive changes coming out of this! There is an opportunity to redo processes that don’t seem to work anymore.”

Libby Sprackling

Goes shopping once a week for a big shop but also doesn’t mind going to the smaller corner shops, protected by her mask, gloves and disinfectant gel.
She finished at Leeds Uni last year and spent October to January traveling in Australia, Vietnam and Thailand. She has been making masks and has been teaching herself how to make her own clothes in lockdown.

Pete Wagon

Enjoys having more free time to grow vegetables and fruit in his allotment plot.
“It never looked as good as it does now. The exceptional good weather during lockdown has been a huge help in dealing with the restrictive measures necessary to contain a further spread of the virus.”
He also delivers food twice a week (a three-course meal and essentials), cooked and assembled by the South Norwood Community Kitchen to roughly 150-190 people in need in their community.

Laura Whittall & Paul Mitchell

run @southnorwoodcommunitykitchen together. A nonprofit using food to bring the community together & saving the lives of unwanted food.

We never really had the true sense of being locked down because we switched to up-scaling the project and meet the increased demand immediately. So, we had a legitimate reason to be outside and never felt that we were breaking the rules.

In the first week during lockdown it was very, very sketchy, everyone was a bit scared of each other, people didn’t want to stand near each other. There were arguments because we were trying to find a way to run the community kitchen within the parameters that were set. And very quickly we realized that this had to be a calculated risk. We took the precautions that we could take but it was either do it or don’t do it.

It just didn’t sit well with me that we would leave our extended family to their own devices. And if we didn’t do it, no one else would. Other groups have come since but no one else moved as quickly as we did. We saw our numbers in demand increase dramatically from 40 to 205, almost instantly. Now we regularly deliver to 118 households which equates to about 150 individuals and then we have about 40ish people who pick up their meals here.

Marc Rattenbury

“It has been a struggle, a real struggle and without places like the South Norwood Community Kitchen, soup kitchens and churches it would be even harder. ““I live in shared accommodation without access to the internet. Without that you don’t have access to your DWP journal and don’t know what the government is communicating to you. All you get is a text message saying: ‘There is an important message for you in your journal.' But the library and the job centre where I would usually go to access the internet are closed right now!”

Max Sprackling

Max is using the time in lockdown to record his first album. He mainly sleeps during the day and works at night.

Kemeriya Mehammed Abduraheman

“I hope that this will change people’s ways. One of the things that I was very disappointed about, was that right before the WHO pandemic announcement, I was shopping and people were shoving and pushing and calling each other names. They were trying to take as much as they could from the supermarkets. It was almost as if we were acting as a bunch of animals. Of course, we are animals but we are also supposed to consider each others needs and support each other. This made me very emotional and I really hope that we will come out of this realising that it is communities coming together that will help us get through these times.”

Cathy Lara

“Wherever possible we tried to source people who were stuck, who would otherwise supply restaurants, and we use them to deliver our fruit and veg for example. And actually, just clubbing together as a group and figuring out who needs what, helped. My initial worry of running out of something essential quickly disappeared because someone will always have what you really need. We just try to live with what we have, so if we run out of something non-essential, we just try to do without or work around it.”

”For me the changes we have seen in society, we have changed from work, work, work, money, money, money to home time, time with the family, valuing the community, that has been a really big change and I hope that these stays. And the changes to the environment, it is just amazing! I love that picture of Everest and that locals could suddenly see it, because air pollution had gone down so drastically.

Paul Mitchell & Laura Whittall

run @southnorwoodcommunitykitchen together. A nonprofit using food to bring the community together & saving the lives of unwanted food.

We never really had the true sense of being locked down because we switched to up-scaling the project and meet the increased demand immediately. So, we had a legitimate reason to be outside and never felt that we were breaking the rules.

In the first week during lockdown it was very, very sketchy, everyone was a bit scared of each other, people didn’t want to stand near each other. There were arguments because we were trying to find a way to run the community kitchen within the parameters that were set. And very quickly we realized that this had to be a calculated risk. We took the precautions that we could take but it was either do it or don’t do it.

It just didn’t sit well with me that we would leave our extended family to their own devices. And if we didn’t do it, no one else would. Other groups have come since but no one else moved as quickly as we did. We saw our numbers in demand increase dramatically from 40 to 205, almost instantly. Now we regularly deliver to 118 households which equates to about 150 individuals and then we have about 40ish people who pick up their meals here.

Les Capen

Aged 87, Les was ordered by his daughters to stay indoors at the beginning of the lockdown. They each took it in turns to deliver him food, leaving it at his front door.
Now he is happy to be out in his allotment again, planting his broccoli seedlings.

Belen Arruz

My biggest fear is that people aren’t going to learn anything from this. They are going to go back to normal but that is going to be worse! Because this happened and it is a massive thing. And most people might not even take it into account and change for it.
So, what does that say about our ability to react and respond appropriately to other looming issues like climate change?

I just wish we could learn, but my fear is that people don’t and that is so disappointing.

Will we just live in permanent crisis – go from crisis to crisis?

I wait until I have a massive shop to do, because I want it to be worth it. The least times I went to the supermarket, I came back so angry and stressed because nobody was respecting the distancing.
It just made me wonder, what is the point of staying at home, not seeing my friend and family, if people just stand right next to me in the supermarket? I was more angry than scared!

I have been furloughed and paid 80% of my salary in my work as nanny. Unlike many of my nanny friends, whose families stopped paying them all together or demanded they would still come to work throughout lockdown. I feel very lucky that mine respected me and my rights.

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