REDEFINING HOME IN A PANDEMIC
How do you define home? Has that changed during the pandemic? We posed these simple questions on social media in mid-April as many millions of people were asked to stay home for their own safety. The pandemic has transformed our outer world in dramatic, visible ways. Ghostly streets. Empty restaurants. Vacant offices. But for many in isolation, it has changed our inner world, too.
In response to our questions, people from 26 countries sent us voice messages sharing intimate experiences with mental health, domestic violence, family relationships. Despite the diversity, the emotions transcend specific circumstances. They speak to the core of humanity and our complicated relationship with the concept of home. To illustrate this, we combined their voices with footage and photographs we shot in our own homes where we were self-isolating. Our work explores how the pandemic has reaffirmed or altered people’s understanding of home, as well as the psychological impacts of those evolving definitions. As the pandemic, climate change and displacement erase familiar structures, we are all called to consider, “What does home truly mean?"
Project of The Home Collective | Supported by Adobe | Published by The Washington Post
