Monica Carson, COVID-19 Enters the Mind of the Youth

The COVID-19 Collection features photographs taken by high school students from across the United States documenting the challenging experience of living through a pandemic.

Created by Working Assumptions — a California-based non-profit that uses visual arts to challenge the assumptions of everyday life — wrkxfmly is an education program guiding students as they make photographs and write captions about work and family in their lives. A year ago, the coronavirus crisis suddenly and drastically altered that already complicated subject. Working Assumptions recognized that the students and teachers participating in this program needed a way to document and process this together. 

The photographs in the COVID-19 Collection capture this unprecedented personal and societal experience, and help viewers of any age recognize and process both the fear and hope of 2020. The students explore the duality of frustration and resilience, and highlight how confinement underscored the importance of connection.  

As one student’s caption reads: “Every time you turn on a screen, you are hearing about the impacts of COVID-19 all over the world, and yet it is so easy to feel alone. Without the connections we have grown so used to, it is often difficult to remember that everyone is struggling with the grief of losing their past lives, and working to build new ones.”