My four chosen final images reflect how the current UK lockdown guidelines has affected the pub trade in my local area. Since the 20th March, all pubs and restaurants have been shut down in order to reduce the threat of Covid-19 spreading. Living in a small country village where the local pub is the community hotspot, it has been incredibly eerie, usually being packed with locals all through the week, they have now been left desolate, boarded up and doors locked as if in a zombie apocalypse film. The likelihood of reopening this year is also fairly slim, with them being realistically the last places to reopen to the public, it is interesting to see a once buzzing location now idle, just brick and mortar without purpose. I wanted to capture this in some way as even though the decision to close pubs/clubs/restaurants was in just, it is still thought-provoking to consider if they can survive the lockdown period.
I shot in straight documentary style as I didn’t want to take away from the subject by creating sequences, double exposures etc and believed that singular straight on images would be the most effective way to infer the message which I intended. Taking the four images straight on of the objects which I wanted to capture without any unnecessary frame space or content meant I could portray the objects as they are without trying to include them in a wider scene, therefor not distracting the viewer from the key focus point in the image. My favourite image of the four is of the pubs sign which displays ‘Good Beer, Good Food, Great Atmosphere’ and then the frame presents the actual situation of an empty beer garden, completely missing customers. The image has a sense of dark satire which I thought when taking the photo and although the situation which is happening currently is obviously terrible, the image finds some sort of humour within the dark times.
Due to not being able to shoot in my usual style and without my usual cameras, I had to use my phone camera to capture the images for the project; I would have preferred to use actual cameras to get better image quality but I think for the kind of work I was doing, my phone held up well as I didn’t need to edit my images past putting them in black and white so I think the lower image quality was/is bearable. Although this isn’t the kind of work I usually create, I think due to the testing conditions I am pleased with the images I was able to create during the lockdown. Although, if I was to replicate the project outside of the lockdown, I would spend much longer on creating each image as I wouldn’t be constraint to trying to work during one exercise hour per day.
Joe Haines 