Jody E. Borhani-D'Amico
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Suburbia March - May 2020

June 1st

3/6/2020

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A morning visitor amidst the sadness
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Maybe the biggest protest of all is this young man with a broken hand on one side and a puppy on the other -- pain and purest joy. He picks the puppy up off the street, checks in and nurtures his charge, and looks ahead. Keeps moving.

That's all anyone is asking for -- to be allowed and empowered to live normal lives. To love, To be hurt, To pick up and keep moving.
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    Diary

    Updated description:

    When my teaching job was first shut down, then shifted to remote work, I began photographing my neighborhood. It's an area near but not in NYC that's very deep in military history. Many of the residents work as police / FD / military, or are nurses. It's deep red politically but also has strong immigrant ties.

    I'm new here, and the thing that has fascinated me since I moved in is the identical houses built en masse in 1960. So many have the exact same floor plan.

    I wanted to capture the conservative tastes of the neighborhood -- in yard decor, in"military cut" lawns and in a chorus of flags that can come across as a dog whistle. I tried to reserve my judgments of my neighbors' political stances. I wanted to catch the eerie quality inherent in planned midcentury communities.

     I rarely go inside my neighbors' homes, but my goal remained: let me honestly document our outdoor moments during the (update Jan 2021 -- still raging) pandemic. I also added in my own moments around and about, since I found them interesting on their own but also because everyone who's non-essential has been spending so much time with themselves and whoever they live with.

    I ended my photo project with the day I attended a Black Lives Matter protest. Since late May 2020, I have felt we are entering a different era that merits a different photographic approach.
      
    Original description: I am observing the COVID era  from the comfort of my suburban neighborhood.
    In March, before most of NY went into quarantine, my students went from shooting on C100s and 6Ds on a Friday to having no school whatsoever on that Monday.
    Many of them have no wifi, no cell phone, no camera. I went home to my 6D, my Pentax, our vintage cameras.
    ​Now I teach online, and every day I ask my students to document their lives in various ways. I feel it is only fair for me to make an attempt at documenting my own life, too.
    I live in a high risk household. I come from a family with riddled with autoimmune, mental and neurological illnesses. And yet, most of my contacts are doing well. I get to work from home, and I have plenty to eat. I have my 6D to shoot on.
    *
    Mine has always been a heard voice.
    I think these photos are tinged with the simple pleasures and complex guilt that this position entails.

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  • Home
  • Photog
    • Photo Series >
      • What Emerges
      • Beckoning
      • Suburbia 2020
      • Self-Reflection
    • Portraits
    • Street Photography >
      • Protests
    • Animals
    • Land
  • Cinema
    • Reel
    • Retail City
    • Old School
  • Visual Art
    • Assemblage
    • Handmade
  • Leadership
    • Student Cinema
  • Bio