AlumniMay 20, 2020

Photojournalism Alumni Cover the Pandemic

Interviews by Julia Popowych

RIT photojournalism alumni are covering the pandemic in a number of roles, as staff photojournalists, photo editors, freelance photographers. Consistently listed as essential workers, many face the daily challenge of keeping healthy while covering the largest global story in decades. Some work in smaller communities or cover metro regions, while others work to gather and assign content from around the world. Freelance photographers, especially those who cover sports and who have been hit hard by the lack of work and are struggling to find assignments during the pandemic, but discovering other creative outlets to keep busy.

Below are the complete interviews with 9 alumni and examples and links to their work.

Traci Westcott

Traci Westcott, class of 2018, is a staff photographer at the Rochester Post Bulletin in Rochester, MN. Follow her on Instagram. Below are some of her images taken since the COVID-19.

Kimber Zimmer, 3, waves goodbye to Spring Valley Resident Maxine Jahn while visiting the residents through the windows during their lockdown to help stop the spread of COVID-19 on Thursday, April 2, 2020, at the center in Spring Valley. “It was joyful, brought me to tears just to see the residents smiling,” Carr’s Clubhouse director Brooke Carr said, “It was heartwarming all around.” (Traci Westcott / twestcott@postbulletin.com)
Amanda Gangelhoff, left, watches as her daughter, Ava, 7, casts glitter onto Madi (last name withheld), 7, while applying imaginary makeup under the constraints of social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic from their sunroofs on Saturday, March 21, 2020 in a parking lot in Rochester, Minnesota. “We wanted to create a positive space for them. This is her best friend, it’s hard for these kids not to see their bests friends. But we also wanted to honor social distancing because it’s really important. You just have to get creative,” Danielle, Madi’s mom, said. Danielle said she noticed a change in Madi’s demeanor by bringing Madi to interact with Ava.
Vice President Mike Pence gives a thumbs-up to Mayo Clinic medical professionals after he toured Mayo facilities involved in COVID-19 research and treatment Tuesday, April 28, 2020, outside the Gonda Building in downtown Rochester. (Traci Westcott / twestcott@postbulletin.com)
Orlando Cortez unloads 650 pounds of hospital linens on Monday, April 20, 2020, at Textile Care Services in southeast Rochester. Protective measures like the gown have always been required of those working with contaminated linens, however with the COVID-19 pandemic, employees are wearing masks, and some gloves. Health care and hospitality are Rochester’s two top industries. They are also Textile Care’s top customers. A wide variety of processes using soaps, chemicals, heat, pressure and ultraviolet light are used to clean and sterilize the sheets, towels, gowns, tablecloths and more that roll through the plant each day. The air in the facility is circulated every 20 minutes. (Traci Westcott / twestcott@postbulletin.com)
Iva Nagel, 7, left, her brother, Jadon, 9, Timi Sanni, 6, Rachel Nagel, and Hope Bengtson, 8, pose for a portrait on the Nagel’s front porch on Tuesday, March 24, 2020, in Rochester. “A lot of families are very overwhelmed,” Rachel Nagel said. “We feel like we’re keeping just a couple families a little bit safer.” With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Nagel is helping her two children learn at home, and she’s also reached out to help a couple of other parents who aren’t able to stay home with their children. Nagel has taken the opportunity to do some non-traditional learning with the children, providing childcare while also ensuring the kids have some educational instruction during the school hiatus.
Tom Blondell of Rochester pauses for a moment after raising flags on his truck prior to a “Gridlock” protest of statewide policies intended to help prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus on Thursday, April 23, 2020, in downtown Rochester. “Our rights are being taken away. It doesn’t make any sense. People are going along with it. I’m not,” Blondell said, “I wanna get my rights back. That’s what I need.” Traci Westcott / twestcott@postbulletin.com)

Traci worked on a series of portraits of people who have compromised immune systems that make contracting COVID-19 especially dangerous. Below are four of the images in her portrait series all shot through doors and windows to keep her subjects safe.

Kasey Rubin has shut down her in-home daycare and is self-isolating to protect her family – a potentially dire decision. Her family relies on the daycare’s income to stay alive. “I know morally and ethically I can’t keep my daycare open and keep the children safe,” Rubin said. I wouldn’t be comfortable keeping it open, knowing that I could be risking my daughter’s life, or other children’s at this point.” Cora Jean, 3, has primary lymphedema with associated lymphatic malformations. The affliction compromises her body’s immune functioning, and it puts the girl at a higher-risk of serious complications if she were to contract COVID-19.
Social distancing isn’t new to 20-month-old Hudson Bray. Now, however, the risks of infection feel much more daunting. “Hudson was diagnosed back in May, so as far as keeping us away from everyone, we’ve been doing this for the last year as is,” Mom said of their lives after her son’s BCOR primitive sarcoma diagnosis. “But it’s even scarier now as a mom with an oncology patient because everything is deemed contaminated, and everyone, even more so than they were before.” She has heightened the family’s already rigid routine of sanitizing and self-distancing. “It’s definitely a lot scarier for even me to be around my son, because of the way this virus is,” Stellenberg said.
Lisa and Hunter Gifford, 10, understand what you’re feeling. They’ve felt it for years. “Welcome to the ship that’s sinking,” Lisa said. “We are kind of glad the rest of the world is understanding it, and hoping they are taking it seriously. It’s just another day in the life of a cancer family. Nothing ends when the chemo is over.” Hunter underwent treatment for metastatic Ewing’s sarcoma when he was just 7 years old, a bone cancer that started in his pelvis and spread into his abdomen and lungs before he was diagnosed. The family has been self-isolating not only to protect Hunter. “I, too, am very high-risk,” Lisa explained. “I have lupus with immune suppression as well as asthma. I’m feeling pretty terrified. I’m worried that if I get sick, I won’t be able to take care of the kids.”
Lois Pearson isn’t your typical 85-year-old, and that’s why it hurts a little more. “I have a lot of things going on normally,” Pearson said. “But we’ll have to see how it turns out,” She has and will continue to need to forgo outings at 125 Live and within the Rochester bluegrass community to fight back against an enemy that can’t be seen. A former nurse herself, Pearson understands how crucial these measures are, and she is self-isolating herself without hesitation until it is safe not only for her, but the entire community, to return to life as we knew it. “I have a wonderful cat who is my companion, and I put picture puzzles together,” she said of how she is now spending her time. “I’m very lucky – I have two great sons, and my neighbors take such good care of me and I have a good number of friends,” all of which she’s been keeping in contact with via phone, she said.

Kim Bubello

Kim Bubello, RIT class of 2015, is a photo editor at TIME magazine. Follow her on Instagram. Below are some examples of her photo editing work and others by her colleagues at the magazine during the Coronavirus pandemic.

Collaboration with artist KangHee Kim (@tinycactus) about escapist art

A German Photographer Captures Ordinary People Adapting to Life Under Lockdown

Other projects on harder to illustrate stories – Changing Diets, Layoffs, Immunocompromised

Tom Brenner

Tom Brenner, RIT class of 2016, is a photojournalist in Washington, D.C. Currently covering national politics for Reuters.

David Carson

David Carson, RIT class of 1995, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer who works on staff at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in St. Louis, MO. Follow him on Instagram.

View this post on Instagram

St. Louis Symphony Orchestra bassoonist Felicia Foland plays a porch performance for her neighbors gathered in front of her home on Thursday, April 2, 2020. "It’s funny how this time of distancing has actually brought our neighbors together," said Foland "It’s a great way for me to continue to play music for people. St. Louis Symphony can not meet as a large group anymore in our big beautiful hall with huge audiences. So I brought a micro version here to my very own front porch". About 10 neighbors she invited over socially distanced on the front lawn and driveway of her home in the Lindenwood Park neighborhood for about 15 minutes of music. This was the second time she has played for her neighbors from her porch. She said she plans to keep playing porch performance during the stay at home order.

A post shared by David Carson (@photocarson) on

Brittainy Newman

Brittainy Newman works on her computer in her bedroom on Monday, April 6, 2020. (Photographs by Brittainy Newman/THE NEW YORK TIMES)

Brittainy Newman is a visual journalist based in New York City. A 2018 graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology’s Photojournalism program, she has since joined The New York Times as a year-long photography newsroom fellow. Follow her on Instagram.

The self-portrait below was featured in a series by Times photographers called Still Lives.

Brittainy Newman eats dinner with her mother Erika Kirkland in separate rooms on Saturday, March 28, 2020. Brittainy had a dry cough and was losing her sense of taste, to be precautious, they ate in separate rooms. (Photographs by Brittainy Newman/THE NEW YORK TIMES)

Brittainy photographed a story (below) about Paralympic runner training during the pandemic.

Rudy Garcia Tolson runs in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on May 14, 2020. (Photograph by Brittainy Newman/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
Customers at the East Village Key Food stock up on food after Mayor De Blasio declared a state of emergency in New York city on Thursday, March 12, 2020. (Photographs by Brittainy Newman/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
(left to right) Diego Verez kisses his boyfriend Alex Gil while holding their 9-month-old Pomeranian named Gio, while wearing masks out of concern of contracting the coronavirus inside the Times Square 42nd street subway station in New York on Wednesday, March 4, 2020. (Photographs by Brittainy Newman/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
Dana Cohen and Adam Quinn get married inside Brooklyn City Hall with their family on Friday, March 6, 2020. (Photographs by Brittainy Newman/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
Titan and Violeta, Siberian huskies, wear face masks to in the Lower East Side in New York City on April 27, 2020.(Photographs by Brittainy Newman/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
Meals on Wheels volunteers Stacy Mark hands out hot and cold food to people in their apartment buildings in the Lower East Side in New York City on April 24, 2020. (Photograph by Brittainy Newman/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
Carl Singer, a postman, takes a break on 8th street sitting in a mailbox in the East Village in New York City on April 16, 2020. “I’m on a double today,” Singer said. “I’m exhausted, but I need to do it. Everyone else is calling in sick.”  (Photographs by Brittainy Newman/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
Junior Davis was hired two weeks ago at the iFresh Market in Chinatown to take peoples temperatures before entering the grocery store in New York City on April 9, 2020. (Photographs by Brittainy Newman/THE NEW YORK TIMES)

Emily Bogle

Emily Bogle is a photo editor and art director working in Washington, D.C. Originally from New York State, she graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology in 2011 with a BFA in photojournalism. She is a MFA candidate in the Integrated Design program at the University of Baltimore. Follow her on Instagram or Twitter.

Families Adjust to Life at Home During Coronavirus

Isolation Diary – photographers document their experience with COVID-19

Italian Lockdown – Images of Life in Isolation.

Brett Carlsen

Brett Carlsen works in the fields of commercial filmmaking, documentary and advertising photography. His past stems from the world of photojournalism which makes for a style that can adapt from skeleton crews and fast productions to long term and in-depth storytelling. Follow him on Instagram.

Before the pandemic, Brett began a podcast about photojournalism called Reciprocity Podcast. He interviews photojournalists, editors and educators in the field.

JuliAnna Patino

JuliAnna Patino is a Colombian-American visual editor and storyteller based in New York and is currently a freelance photo editor at The New York Times. A 2018 graduate from the Rochester Institute of Technology, she received her BFA in photojournalism with an immersion in Latino Studies. Follow her on Instagram.

Among many stories she has edited and produced during the pandemic, JuliAnna worked on Still Lives, a collection of stories about and by Times photographers and this story about face masks produced in the meat-packing district of New York City.

Josh Barber

Josh Barber, a 2014 RIT graduate, is a freelance photojournalist and photo editor specializing in sports photography based in Southern California. Like many freelancers who specialize in sports, he has been without a large volume of work during the pandemic. Follow him on Instagram.

TAGS:

Related posts