Photojournalist Eric Francis saw a blank slate on his professional calendar after COVID-19 hit. He informally began shooting pictures of friends posed in their lived environments. This took on new meaning when he cultivated their stories and expanded the effort beyond his social circle.
“It felt important—with a story and a narrative revealing itself,” he says. “It just felt like a moment in time that needed to be marked and this being a good way of doing it.”
Francis said he asked people to share how they were feeling in as few or as many words as they wanted, though he did ask that they “stay away from politics.”
“A common theme is gratitude and hope that things are going to be better,” he added. “That’s encouraging. I didn’t expect to have that much of it.”
He also implements motifs throughout, such as being sure to include house numbers.
Francis also asked participants to turn on their porch lights, no matter the time of day, to symbolize a beacon of promise. “I always try to frame people within a frame. Their living space is just as important to the composition as the people themselves,” he said. “It may not be their forever home, but in the history of their lives, it’s the place where they rode this out.”
Fujifilm sent him a medium format digital camera to use. “It makes a really detailed image. I thought if this ever winds up as a gallery show or book I want to make the pictures big so all the details get noticed.”
His stark black-and-white renderings give added weight to the compositions and captions.
“I’ve always been drawn to black-and-white. It’s simple, it’s clean, it cuts out some of the distractions color can provide. The composition and connection to the subject have to be strong. There’s no allowance for a weak image.”
Should new outbreaks trigger mass quarantine, Francis said, “I will probably pick this thing up full force and roll with it again because there’s going to be a whole other set of images to be made.”
Over Memorial Day weekend, Francis also covered the Black Lives Matter protests that saw masses of people ignore quarantine to demand justice. His portraits of protest fold neatly into his project.
“I think it’s going to go down as a really important weekend in the history of Omaha that was part of the change.”
Isolation in the 402 may be the start of a new direction in his career. “It seems like the perfect time to explore new ideas.”
View his project on Instagram: @Efphotopix and @Isolation402.
This article was printed in the September 2020 edition of Omaha Magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
