Lockdown Doorstep Project
When I went on my maternity leave from work I knew I wanted to spend my time getting back into photography and capturing all of our new and amazing moments with our little girl. My daughter was born 5 weeks before the first UK Lockdown so our plan to get out and about together was put on hold for a while. It was about half way through the first lockdown, I had just about exhausted the photos I could take around the house and in our garden and it was at this point I discovered a project that photographers around the country were taking part in; capturing doorstep photographs of families from a safe distance during the permitted 1 hour of exercise per day.
I knew I could do this, with my little one in tow, we were walking the streets for an hour every day anyway so why not photograph some families on my route.
I put out a post on facebook to my local area and immediately got lots of responses from families eager to take part.
Once I had a list of people I planned a route every day that would fit within the government guidelines, I ensured I could get around the route and back home within an hour, I stood on the path outside the families houses ensuring social distancing, I texted everyone to let them know I was at their house so that I didn’t have to knock on doors or touch door bells. It was a well oiled machine.
The project was a great way for me to get out and about with my daughter, see and speak to other people and capture a moment in history that will hopefully never happen again.
Families mentioned to me that they wanted to have photos taken as it was very rare that their entire family were all at home at the same time and to capture them in such a strange time and hearing everyone’s stories was amazing.
The news of my project spread across my local area and it gained more and more interest as the weeks went on and I was lucky enough to receive an email from Radio York who wanted me to speak about the project.
Malton Museum reached out to me as they were creating a lockdown section of their displays and asked if they could feature the families and the project. I had so many families who were happy to have their images included in the exhibition and this went on display in Summer 2021. This exhibition has now been stored in the museum’s archives and I feel very privileged that my work and my project will be stored as a little piece of history.
Our local newspaper wrote an article on the project and I’m very grateful to them for spreading the word of my work.
Read the full article here: Gazette & Herald
I wanted to take this opportunity to thank all of the wonderful families who took part in my project, lots of people said to me how grateful they were for the images and for the conversation with someone outside of their own homes but I would love to thank everyone who took part as the families had no idea how much this project meant to me. It wasn’t the easiest thing having a newborn in a pandemic but the project and the reason to get out and about every day really helped me mentally and it really has shaped my style of photography.