Registered nurse Jennifer Atkins’ photo of her son in an empty store aisle was the winner of the BU Center on Emerging Infectious Diseases’ Life in the Age of a Pandemic photo contest. Photo by Atkins

COVID-19

COVID-19 Photo Contest Winners Capture Moments of Joy, Sorrow, Meaning in Crisis

Life in the Age of a Pandemic competition a reminder of impact of empty shelves, masking, and socially distanced celebrations

Back in those first days of the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020—when flour was a hot commodity, hand sanitizer the new gold—registered nurse Jennifer Atkins headed to her local store to find…nothing. The shelves had been stripped bare. She and one of her kids immortalized the moment with a lighthearted photo—an image that’s been named the winner of the Boston University Center on Emerging Infectious Diseases’ (CEID) Life in the Age of a Pandemic photo contest.

Open to all BU community members, the competition invited entries that caught “the essence of what we have all gone through or [exemplify] your own unique experience from the last four years as it relates to the pandemic.” Atkins’ photo—titled, “No toilet paper?!”—won her an iPad mini.

“We were stunned to see completely empty shelves where there had once been abundant supplies of paper goods (toilet paper, facial tissues, and paper towels),” wrote Atkins, who works at Boston Medical Center’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, in her entry submission. “This photo is my very flexible son Shay showing off the empty aisle (and nearly empty store).”

While we may all be eager to consign the pandemic to history, Nahid Bhadelia, CEID’s founding director, says the photo contest was designed to help us recognize—and memorialize—how it changed our world.

“We tend to want to collectively forget when we have a traumatic event like the COVID-19 pandemic,” says Bhadelia, a BU Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine associate professor of medicine who recently served on the White House COVID-19 Response Team. “We wanted to capture these moments while they’re still fresh in our memories. Looking back now allows us to realize how much life has changed since the beginning of the pandemic.”

The second-place entry was BU master’s student Raina Levin’s (SPH’25) photo of her socially distanced Northeastern University undergraduate graduation at Fenway Park. “In May 2021, I felt very lucky to have a college graduation at all,” Levin wrote in her submission. “Students were spaced apart and each allowed only one guest. My aunt, who lives locally, was my guest of honor. While subdued, my graduation still felt festive, a reminder that we could still be together while physically distant.”

As one of the judges, Bhadelia says she was struck by how personal many of the photos were and “how people found joy or meaning in their everyday lives during a crisis.”

The competition also had a popular choice category, with a vote open to BU faculty, staff, and students. The two winners were both PhD students: Aubrey Odom (CDS’27, ENG’27), for a snapshot of an isolated performer in New York’s Central Park, and Stephanie Loo (SPH’23), for a photo of a discarded mask encrusted with shells.

CEID brings experts together from a range of disciplines to help anticipate and take on global pandemics—leading research, hosting multidisciplinary events and webinars (its next one, on the H5N1 strain of avian flu, is happening on May 9), and partnering with government agencies and community organizations. But Bhadelia says the photo contest reinforces an important lesson for researchers who want to translate their work into action.

“Pandemic policies need to start with individuals and communities,” she says. “People experience crises at a personal level. Policies that don’t take that into consideration won’t be effective long term.”