Former BBC China editor and campaigner for equal pay
Paralegal, trainee barrister and former student of Lancing College.
Founder of the Oxford Homeless Project who I interviewed for How To Make a Difference.
Sally lives on her own, and when I made this portrait had already been social distancing at home for over three weeks. It seems like nothing now, but back in April 2020, we were getting used to this way of living. She works for the Deliveroo technical team, so working remotely is quite easy from a practical point of view. But Sally says she finds it really hard being stuck at home working alone all day because she misses the human contact.
Sally takes a half hour walk outside at the end of each day. At the weekend she has been walking around the deserted streets of the City of London.
However, in normal times Sally says she could easily spend 5 or 6 hours of the day outside at the weekend. That’s another thing she really misses. She loves swimming and was planning on taking a sabbatical this year to swim in all the lidos around the UK. That idea has been put on hold.
Does anyone else feel like they never really left lockdown? I've got that feeling that I remember as a child, when the whole class gets punished because one or two kids have been acting up. We have been so careful, but the novelty has definitely worn off. I'm trying to practise acceptance, but it's hard. This is my friend Anupam who lives in Washington DC. I caught up with him recently via Zoom. He told me how depressing it feels to have been a very active 60 something, to then find yourself considered vulnerable. He's been isolating at home since March.
This was one of the first Zoom portraits I made in March 2020. I realised that we were living through an unprecedented time and that video chat portraits were one way to record what was happening.
This is a portrait from a series of women from the Gatehouse Project, a homelessness charity in Oxford, made during the brief lockdown easing in 2020 and exhibited as part of Photo Oxford.
Nancy-Ann Min DeParle served as the Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy in the administration of President Obama from January 2011 to January 2013
What a strange and unsettling time to be 39 weeks pregnant!
This is Laura, who quite rightly pointed out to me that as it’s her first child, she doesn’t really know for sure what things would have been like without COVID19.
She does realise that her midwives wouldn’t have been wearing masks during her check ups, that the check ups would have been at the GP’s surgery rather than a Children’s Centre and that her baby showers wouldn’t have been cancelled. Some of Laura’s pregnant friends have even found themselves having their prenatal check ups in the local football stadium.
Laura has been really missing seeing her close friends and family during these final weeks of her pregnancy. Hopefully, she won’t have to wait too long once the baby is born.
Like many of us now, Laura has been at home for about six weeks already. She stopped going to her work place a little early because she was feeling very anxious about people coming to work with coughs and sore throats. Her employer was very accommodating.
We wish you all the best Laura. Special thanks to Bonnie the dog who joined in the photoshoot at just the right moment!
Co Founder of Stemettes
Juan is a columbian artist. He works as a coder and programmer and also a teacher. Juan works for the government in Bogota. For the last four years he’s worked at a cultural organisation called Plataforma where he teaches coding and programming through artistic practise. This means that even though his students are staying at home, most of them have the IT equipment to keep on learning. This is not the case for most Colombians. When I photographed Juan, the future seemed very uncertain in Colombia. Juan was worried that the health care system was not great, and people were not taking lockdown seriously. He thought that the government was more concerned about the economy than people's health. That was the end of June when Colombia had lost just over 3000 to COVID19, now that number is 26,000.
David Roxbee Cox FRS FBA FRSE was a British statistician and educator. His wide-ranging contributions to the field of statistics included introducing logistic regression, the proportional hazards model and the Cox process, a point process named after him.
Human rights and gay activist. Former Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa.
British journalist, newsreader and correspondent for BBC News.
This is a portrait from a series of women from the Gatehouse Project, a homelessness charity in Oxford, made during the brief lockdown easing in 2020 and exhibited as part of Photo Oxford.
Writer and broadcaster
This is Luna in her bedroom in Portland, Oregon. Luna, who is 15, was studying abroad in Shikoku Prefecture, Japan when the pandemic started to get serious. She had been living there for 7 months and was really happy and enjoying the experience. However, when schools started to close, the Rotary Club, who had organised the visit, decided that the students should return to their home country.
Luna was really sad to have to leave her life Japan, and it has been really strange to come back to the US in lockdown. She cannot see her friends, school is all online and she’s at home with her family. All adventures have been put on hold for the time-being.
From the Nice Cup of Tea Exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
Director General of the BBC
From the Nice Cup of Tea Exhibition for the Ashmolean Museum
Antigua and Barbuda's High Commissioner
From the Gratitude Project
American physicist, and currently the Cecil and Ida Green Education Professor.
Donor, Exeter College, Oxford
Screen writer and novelist
From the Nice Cup of Tea Exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum
Waterstone’s Children’s Laureate
South African-born human rights activist of Indian descent who was the Secretary-General of Amnesty International until December 2019
This is a portrait via FaceTime of my friend, who works in a busy NHS hospital, surrounded by people with COVID19, helping to save lives.
I was really grateful that he spared a minute one morning for this picture, after putting on his PPE. It was definitely the most speedy portrait of this series so far. Most people who I phone at home have plenty of time on their hands. Not so a hospital consultant.
I was relieved to see that he had what looked like good protective gear, but he was virtually unrecognisable. It honestly felt like a call from another world. I can imagine it must feel very strange to have all your carers looking like this.
While many of us stay at home, and try our best not to spread the virus around, I wanted to share this counter-point image, and remember those who are facing this challenge head on every day.
From the Gratitude Project
This was one of 28 portraits made for Keble College Oxford, for their Portrait of Keble Exhibition 2019/2021
Indian Economist. This was one of 28 portraits made for Keble College Oxford for their Portrait of Keble Exhibition 2019/2021.
