PANDEMONIUM

PANDEMONIUM : a collection of photos taken in Paris during the height of the pandemic.

In March 2020, I arrived in Paris on a gap year. I had been hoping to experience life in a big city, but just one week after my arrival, fate soon put paid to those hopes. As the city fell into lockdown, I found myself stranded in a strange new world, oceans away from family and friends, oblivious as to when I could see home again.

During those twelve months, as the pandemic raged, I found myself walking around deserted streets, a camera in hand, capturing a city of lights on dim. In a strange way, those aimless wanderings came to form a sort of therapy, and so, ironically, the very act of documenting the chaos all around me helped keep me from succumbing to it.

The result of those random walks is PANDEMONIUM, a zine composed of 32 photos taken in and around Paris. While the images are largely spontaneous and documentary in nature, they also aim to express the sense of loneliness, anxiety and suspended hope palpable around me, and within me. To give an idea of what those outings entailed, every time I came home, I would clean my camera with an antibacterial wipe, as if afraid that the tool I was using to record a world undone by Covid could soon undo me too.

While that day never arrived, thank God, the last day of my visa eventually did, and before long I found myself walking down empty airport hallways and plane aisles while making my way back to familiar soil. Now safe from Covid's clutches, I wanted to make this zine to commemorate my particular experience of the pandemic, which of course is still fuming today, but whose harms I've been incredibly lucky to evade, for the most part.