Bildband »Call it Corona«: Stilles Land

Today we did a corona test on the children because child number 2 had a bit of a fever and felt unwell. At the same time, in the winter of 2023/24 you will again see people wearing face masks in the subway and hear about hospitals that are requiring their visitors to wear masks in order to protect patients, i.e. the vulnerable groups, from infection with the virus that is still or is already spreading .

Mask requirement? Vulnerable groups? Corona tests? 7-day incidence? Today these seem strange terms from dark times. It was just four years ago when the first reports of a new and potentially dangerous virus made the rounds and soon after the first deaths were reported. The newspapers wrote that it had passed from animals to humans, a so-called zoonosis, terms that had never been heard before. At the latest when the first images from Bergamo, Italy, flickered across the screens, with army trucks transporting those who had died from the virus to overloaded crematoriums, the world fell into a state of shock and shortly afterwards into a general lockdown.

The absurdities of this time, born of helplessness, are burned into the minds of all our contemporaries: weeks of school and daycare closures, closed playgrounds, old people who suffered and died alone in nursing homes because of the contact bans, without being allowed to see their relatives again. Not to forget a divided society that fell into different camps. While some took the recommendations of the Robert Koch Institute seriously and dutifully joined the queues in front of the vaccination centers, others doubted the supposed danger of the virus and disputed the need for multiple vaccinations. The conflicts escalated when the authorities denied unvaccinated people access to social life, public institutions, restaurants, theaters, etc.

The fault lines between “lateral thinkers”, opponents of vaccination and those who, despite all doubts, did not completely lose their trust in the state’s actions continue to the present day. Perhaps it has something to do with these distortions that have never been dealt with that the great repression began immediately after the official end of the health emergency. After the return to normality, the representatives of the respective camps who had achieved prominence disappeared into obscurity again. Who knows exactly who Attila Hildmann or Christian Drosten are or what role they played? The peculiarities of this time have been forgotten; other things have long kept the world in suspense, new wars and climate change are threatening the fragile global balance.

In view of the multiple crises, nobody actually wants to hear anything about Corona anymore, and so the first reaction when receiving the voluminous illustrated book “Call it Corona” is defensiveness. Just don’t have to deal with it anymore; If you come late, life punishes you. Fulfilling his duty as a reviewer, the author finally leafs through the book, in which a total of 89 photographers have captured their views on the pandemic on 250 pages – and is surprised. Many details of the state of emergency in which the country was in for more than two years have already been forgotten, and people only vaguely remember some of the bizarre phenomena, backgrounds and their own emotions.

At times the viewer feels like an ethnologist on field research observing an exotic people carrying out their strange rituals. Although the last state Corona requirements were lifted just two years ago, in April 2022, the perceived distance is large from the time when the authorities invented the “2G+ rule” and going to a bar was only possible with a daily Corona test. So great that you end up devoting yourself to the book’s photographic stories, essays and reports with interest. Seen in this way, the illustrated book comes at just the right time, as the memory of the pandemic with all its accompanying effects seems to have entered its historicization phase. In keeping with this, an investigative committee is currently meeting in the Brandenburg state parliament to examine the Corona policy, and other federal states want to follow suit.

The standstill of public and all too often private life is the most defining memory of the time of successive more or less harsh lockdowns. The fact of the sudden stop on the open road was too outrageous. People were still busy with the frantic hustle and bustle of everyday life and managing their workload when the authorities pulled the emergency brake – and from one moment to the next people were on their own, business was at a standstill and it was even forbidden to come along to meet anyone other than the next of kin. For many people, a time of silent suffering and social isolation began.

The current Pisa study testifies to the devastating effects of the contact ban and failed homeschooling on children and young people. However, the truth is that for many families, especially when the children were still small, it was possible to see the phase of standstill as a valuable one, as it offered the unexpected opportunity to gather around the campfire at home and very much Spending a lot of time together – time that never exists in everyday life.

The lockdown unleashed unexpected creativity in many people who had to keep themselves busy if they didn’t want to waste away in front of the television. Consequently, many of the photo essays in the book are a direct reflection of the standstill. A ghostly emptiness jumps out at the viewer in many pictures; The fascination that the quiet country has exerted on many artists is obvious. Often we see a city paused, usually roaring with life, now given over to contemplation. When have you ever seen something like this? A city of millions with deserted streets and squares? Areas like the Reeperbahn, which are otherwise characterized by fun-loving crowds. Berlin, where the Kreuzberg nights are long… and now empty. Or, another bizarre thing, open-air pop concerts whose listeners all sit in their cars in front of the stage.

Although the virus dominated our lives for a long time, the danger remained abstract for most people. The photographers gathered in the volume, with plenty of free time, tried to make the pandemic and the strange atmosphere of the lockdown visible and understandable. While some roamed through the city and countryside despite the official ban on going out, others documented – mostly on assignment – the goings-on in the intensive care units, where the employees, invisible to the public, fought to the point of exhaustion for every single life.

A frequent subject is the impressionistic observations of the now cramped private living space known as “Corona Diaries” or “Chronicles”. Everyday life that has now taken on a whole new meaning, restrictions, loneliness, distance, everyday mask life are the keywords for many a contemplative engagement with the immediate environment. With such a comprehensive inventory as the volume “Call it Corona” aims to be, it is ultimately surprising that it does not contain any work that addresses the broad field of testing and vaccination. After all, the test centers that popped up like mushrooms in the warm rain of state money were among the facilities that shaped the cityscape for a while, as were the vaccination centers, in front of which people patiently waited for hours in endless queues.

Only in retrospect does it become clear what a turning point the Covid pandemic and especially the repeated lockdowns meant, especially for our working world. This has changed radically due to the widespread establishment of home offices, at least for those who can work at their desk at home.

Photographers do not belong to this group; they have to go out into the world and capture what is. Despite the loss of orders, they were ultimately among the lucky ones during the lockdown, as they were able to hold on to their cameras and work, while other freelancers were forced to twiddle their thumbs and plunged into an existential emergency, which the government Corona aid could only alleviate. Thanks to the volume curated by the Cologne photographer, gallery owner and teacher Wolfgang Zurborn, we can now sit back comfortably and reflect on the recent past. Past? In any case, the youngest child’s corona test was positive.

Wolfgang Zurborn (ed.): Call it Corona. Edition Bildperlen, 250 pages, €49.95. In bookstores or direct sales: www.callitcorona.com