ABOUT

Hours catching up on books that had been stacking and films that were archived to watch at a later stage saw the first lockdown through. In a surreal way, it felt like a much-needed forced break from the everyday, an industrial strength long weekend.

With the announcement of a two-week extension, the first signs of cabin fever started creeping in. I was fortunate to live in a large garden; I felt the pain of folks living in small city apartments. The daily highlight became the 8 p.m. flashing to the homes across the bay and watching their return signals. We eagerly waited for the countdown each night as it became our contact with the outside world. I put a green filter over my flash to symbolise calm. I felt lucky to own a green filter; the return flashes were plain white.

I tinkered with almost everything at my disposal in those weeks: vintage large format cameras and expired film, Indian inks and specialised Chinese paint brushes.
It's bizarre to think what we went through as time speeds on. Pictures with masked faces now look like another time and place in a foreign news feed. I now double-take when I see a rare masked face in public. It's indicative of how quickly we slip back into the norm. When I happened to shoot someone, they would instinctively pull the mask down. I would request them to keep it on; someday, someone will ask why everyone wore masks in the pictures.

The different series I created are lighthearted but were a much-needed exercise keeping the brain active and distracted from the hell breaking loose around me.