[IPhoneography]
Corona Diary: City in Lockdown, 2020
Corona Diary is a series of photographs and short film (made on an iPhone) by Roberta Fineberg (RF), which speaks to a city and its people at the epicenter of a pandemic. With Covid-19 forever morphing and changing the world as we know it, RF documented New York City in spring 2020 in a visual snapshot diary format.
For the artist’s Corona Diary the focus is on an unusual spring when New York City became the epicenter of the virus in the US and its sudden outbreak had people’s undivided attention. New Yorkers became on equal playing field as the virus did not discriminate. Essential workers, especially those in healthcare, became superheroes while New Yorkers sheltered in place. The personal and collective experience of lockdown and quarantine captivated RF who merged looking within and outside herself to find strength and resilience through making pictures on daily walks in her neighborhood.
The iconic surgical gloves and masks, which New Yorkers have been wearing as preventative measures since the onset of the pandemic became the new normal. In one image a blue glove was tossed to the ground and sits among pink petals on an Upper East Side avenue. The photo captures the arrival of spring, on Park Avenue lined with flowers and cherry blossoms, remaining in sharp contrast to suffering, illness, and loss. In another image, cloth face masks cover the mouths of a Romeo and Juliette statue outside the Delacorte Theater in Central Park - drawing attention to the bronze figures’ embracing. Stirring up feelings of separation and isolation the image reminding us of the human desire for contact and intimacy. Masks are temporary and deteriorate while bonds remain indestructible. Will love conquer all?
Faced with new challenges New Yorkers become epic, such as the pizzeria employee striking a metal bowl to salute essential workers. A couple box near the Great Lawn, a man sings gospel music beneath the arches of Bethesda Terrace in Central Park, and a South African bartender intrepidly gazes into the camera.
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Appreciations
“Your photos are incredible. Each one says so much about this time and together they tell such a powerful story and show the city as we’ve never seen it before. Somehow it feels that its soul has been laid bare and we can see it and its beauty more clearly and feel sustained by it in a way that is so stark and new. Like going to another city, but it’s ours — our dearly beloved, bruised and beaten but never defeated New York. Thank you for creating this important photographic diary.”
— Lisa Katzman, documentary filmmaker, journalist, and screenwriter
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What is striking is the emptiness of the city, the clearing out, the starkness, busyness absent – everybody has gone out of town or into hiding. Images of the deserted and dwelled in are captured: many closed businesses on abandoned city streets. “You Will Never Beat New York” is scrawled across a bar window and “Happiness is this way” spray-painted on a sidewalk. A miniature toy shopping cart with words “Let’s Play” becomes a message about the desire to thrive regardless of disaster. New York and the world may be down … but not out.
Since Roberta Fineberg made the Corona Diary, a number of events have occurred. Her snapshot visual diary ends as civil unrest begins: in May 2020 protesters gather to protest racism. Millions join in around the nation to show support for Black Lives Matter (BLM).
A tricky infectious disease, social unrest, high unemployment and crime, analysts predict years of financial recovery. What will a post-pandemic New York City be like?
Hindsight is 20/20 and RF’s photographs and award-winning short film You Will Never Beat New York add to the dialogue on the pandemic and people’s beliefs that the city and the world are just waiting to reinvent…
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*You Will Never Beat New York received 14 laurel awards from indie film festivals 2020-2021