Amina Shabani: Photos of Life Before the Pandemic & Now
Shortly before spring break 2020, Amina Shabani gave the students in her Spanish through Film & New Media class a project to photograph an ordinary moment of life. Her students responded with a wealth of photos of gathering of friends, crowded grocery stores, students gathering at an MBTA stop, and more. Shortly after this photography project, Covid-19 struck and upended the ‘ordinary moments’ of life, giving a special poignancy to this collection of photos taken on the eve of the pandemic.
This fall term, Shabani assigned the project again, to see how the new realities of everyday life would emerge in the photographs. The images she received revealed a life that has become very different, with photos of zoom sessions, people on the streets in masks, and other hallmarks of life during the pandemic. Not everything was different, though scenes of nature played a prominent role in the photos taken both before and after.
A more in-depth article can be found in BU Today.