One Shift
It started in April after I read article after article about what health care workers were enduring in the face of COVID-19. Not enough PPE, retaliation and repercussions from their own employers, harassment from the public and the mere fact that they were entering a workplace with this disease that was/is running rampant through the world. Everyday tasks would now take twice as long. Surgeries would be crammed into a marathon day, short staffed departments would end up with overworked employees. Travelers would lose their contracts, pregnant workers would be reassigned or let go at short notice. The white tents outside the hospitals were eerie, always reminding me of those tents in ET that terrified me as a kid.
I was scared, knowing my own mom, a 63 year old labor and delivery nurse, was going in for her shift, night after night, and the risk she was taking to just do her job, be at her place of work. And I thought about how easy I had it. How I didn’t have to enter through white tents or come in contact with people potentially exposed, just to do my job. I wanted to document this moment in time. These people, that kept, and continue showing up no matter how many unknowns were still out there, no matter how much harder their days and nights had suddenly become, no matter how much lack of support they may or may not have been receiving.
I put out a call on Facebook and just asked people to share within their networks and see if anyone would be willing to be photographed before and after work. I didn’t expect a response. I feared people would think I was being careless with the disease. And such are the times that yes, the bullies would come out as they do and tell me what a horrible, stupid thing I was doing. How COVID wasn’t real or how people weren’t really dying. And ugh, that just made me want to do it even more.
But people responded. And I traveled all over the Seattle area, from Everett to Federal Way to Issaquah and everywhere in between. It caught me off guard how meeting these strangers, willing to stand there in the street with me shoving a camera in their face, would be so impactful. How open they were. Not everyone was having the same experience. Some were having a harder go at it. To some it was just another day at the office, but you know, now leaving with mask lines and putting their shoes in separate containers.
It’s taken me til now, in August to release the images. I just want to do right by these people. What follows is a simple documentation of photographing a health worker immediately before their shift and coming back and shooting them immediately after. Sometimes 8 hours later, or 12 hours or even 24.
This is simply what one shift looks like in 2020.
