For many of us, one year of pandemic-induced lockdown with our families has been a challenge, emotionally and physically. But what do you do, if family is all you have?
Image: Imago Images/photothek/U. Grabowsky
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Family Affairs: Human relationships up close
A photography exhibition in Hamburg seeks to portray the myriad aspects of family life, and the ongoing pandemic forces us to see the images in a new light.
Image: Dario Mitidieri
A day at the beach
For Spanish photographer Lucia Herrero, the beach serves as an escape from daily struggles. In her series "Tribes," the seaside provides a studio-like backdrop, with Herrero creating family portraits whose formality is reminiscent of ancient paintings. This work is among the pieces on show at the photo exhibition "Family Affairs" at Hamburg's Deichtorhallen museum.
Image: Lucia Herrero
Forgotten midlife women
For Israeli photographer Elinor Carucci, middle-aged women are often overlooked in the arts and in cinema. She wants to focus on women in this age group through her work, in which she often appears as a subject. Here, in "Three Generations" (2016), the photographer is seen on the left side, cuddling with her daughter and mother.
Image: Elinor Carucci
A confusing time
UK photographer Sian Davey focuses on the family in her work, and more specifically on children becoming teenagers — a phase that can be quite difficult. In a series called "Martha," Davey documents the development of her stepdaughter, Martha, from a child to a grown woman.
Image: Siân Davey
The lost images of a family
Italian photographer Dario Mitidieri took pictures of Syrian families in two refugee camps in Lebanon for his series "Lost Family Portraits." The composition of the photos is inspired by traditional family portraits, but the empty chairs stand for those who would have normally been present, but are lost or dead now.
Image: Dario Mitidieri
A particular relationship
In his series "The Absence of Two," Akihito Yoshida portrays the special relationship of a woman and her grandson over the years. She raised him as a child, and he went on to take care of her as an elderly woman. The protagonists of this story are Yoshida's own grandmother and cousin, whose bond has been immortalized through the photographer's pictures.
Image: Akihito Yoshida
A woman's story
In her series "Ke Lefa Laka," which means "It's my inheritance" in Sesotho, South African photographer Lebohang Kganye places herself literally in her mother's shoes by adding a digital image of herself in the old pictures of her mother. In this manner, she brings them close to one another.
Image: Lebohang Kganye
The Christmas Tree bucket
One Christmas Eve, Australian photographer Trent Parke was sick, and while he was throwing up in a bucket, he asked his wife to take a picture. That inspired an entire series, the "Christmas Tree Bucket," portraying bizarre aspects of family life during the holidays.
Image: Trent Parke/Magnum Photos
Love, loss and the family
Argentinian photographer Gustavo Germano's pictures in the series "Ausencias" depicts the loss of family members through the military junta's war and persecution. He juxtaposes archival photographs with current pictures, keeping the memory of those who died in the center of his work. The exhibition "Family Affairs" runs from May 18 to July 4, 2021.
Image: Gustavo Germano
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Earlier this year, Zijah Sherwani, the eldest of four sisters, moved back with her parents in New Delhi to prepare for the wedding of one of her siblings on April 5.
When her father started feeling unwell, Sherwani remembers asking him to get a COVID test, but he refused, attributing the flu to changing weather. "When I and another sister of mine got sick, we decided to get a test done. On April 3, we got to know that we had COVID, which meant that the wedding had to be canceled."
A very tough, emotionally-charged period began for Sherwani's family. "Because it was my father who first got sick and refused to get the COVID test done, my sister who was supposed to get married and I began blaming him."
Sherwani's father is a diabetic and suffers from high blood pressure. After contracting COVID-19, he was confined to his bed and could barely speak. "We all started shouting at and blaming each other. It was emotionally draining for all of us. At that moment, you don't think logically and lose empathy. We were all living together and it was difficult to understand what each one of us was going through."
Some days later, Sherwani's father's oxygen levels dropped and it was decided he and his wife would go to the hospital. "It was at that moment, when I was coordinating with the ambulance driver and the hospital, and when they were leaving the house… I remember crying and feeling so hollow, so empty."
India's second COVID wave leaves suffering in its wake
India is in mourning as coronavirus ravages cities across the country. More than 300,000 new cases are currently being reported every day, with people pleading for beds and oxygen outside hospitals.
Image: Amit Dave/REUTERS
India sees its darkest days of pandemic
India has added hundreds of thousands of cases in recent days, and the total death toll has surpassed 220,000. Cities are running out of space to bury or cremate the dead.
Image: Danish Siddiqui/REUTERS
COVID sufferers seek medical support at temples
An elderly woman suffering from breathing difficulties due to COVID-19 waits to receive free supplemental oxygen outside a Sikh temple on the outskirts of Delhi in Ghaziabad. Many who are struggling for breath due to COVID-19 have flocked to the temple, hoping to secure some of its limited oxygen supplies.
Image: ADNAN ABIDI/REUTERS
COVID patients turn to informal health services
Hospitals in Delhi and across the country are turning away patients after running out of medical oxygen and beds. Many have put out urgent notices saying they can't cope with the rush of patients. The Sikh temple in Ghaziabad has come to resemble the emergency ward of a hospital. People all across Delhi are seeking and creating makeshift health care spaces.
Image: ADNAN ABIDI/REUTERS
Doctors treating patients wherever possible
A health care worker tests blood oxygen levels of a COVID patient inside an ambulance in the eastern city of Kolkata. With people being forced to wait many hours to receive treatment, doctors have been treating people in cars and taxis parked in front of hospitals.
A couple wait inside a rickshaw until they can enter a COVID-19 hospital for treatment in the western city of Ahmedabad. Social media and local news footage have captured desperate relatives begging for oxygen outside hospitals or weeping in the street for loved ones who have died waiting for treatment.
Image: Amit Dave/REUTERS
India in mourning
A young boy at a crematorium mourns the loss of his father, who died from COVID-19. In the last month alone, daily COVID cases in India have increased eight times over — and deaths, 10 times. Health experts have said the actual death toll is probably far higher than the official numbers.
Image: Adnan Abidi/REUTERS
India's younger population also hit
This 35-year-old woman is suffering from breathing difficulties due to COVID-19. Like many others, she is waiting in front of a hospital to receive oxygen support. Scientists are concerned that a more infectious "double mutation" of the virus is spreading in India.
Image: ADNAN ABIDI/REUTERS
Second COVID wave 'supremely contagious'
The family of a COVID victim mourn together outside a mortuary of a hospital in New Delhi. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said India's current infection wave is "particularly dangerous" and that people were falling sick more severely and for longer.
"It is supremely contagious, and those who are contracting it are not able to recover as swiftly."
The unfolding crisis is most noticeable in India's overwhelmed graveyards and crematoriums. Burial grounds in the capital New Delhi are running out of space. In other cities, glowing funeral pyres light up the night sky. "The virus is swallowing our city's people like a monster,'' said Mamtesh Sharma, an official at Bhadbhada Vishram Ghat crematorium in the central city of Bhopal.
Image: Adnan Abidi/REUTERS
Vaccine drive falling behind
India's vaccination program is lagging, with only 10% of the country's population having received one dose, and 1.5% having received both doses. Indians aged 18 and older are now eligible for a vaccine. The United States has said it would send raw materials for vaccine production to help strengthen India's capacity to manufacture more AstraZeneca vaccine.
Image: Francis Mascarenhas/REUTERS
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Challenges for the family
"We are living through an intense period for family life, governed by a unique set of very strong external boundaries," writes clinical psychiatrist Jay L Lebow in a paper called "Family in the age of COVID-19."
Lebow explains that these boundaries have become very rigid in a time when close physical contact has been restricted by orders to remain within one's living units.
For an individual, this could mean making intentional choices about who to be in touch with and who to exclude from regular contact. Additionally, as Lebow writes, families in many cases have also suffered losses of members or income, aspects which further derail normal life.
"Families have faced many challenges during the pandemic. One of the most prevalent issues faced by most professional families is balancing work-family life," Quebec-based Tina Montreuil, assistant professor of psychology at McGill University, Canada, told DW in a written statement. "Since our homes have become our virtual workplace throughout the pandemic, setting clear limits or delineation between work and family life had become compromised. As such, families face the challenge of setting critical, mindful and uninterrupted family time during the lockdown," she added.
Additionally, Berlin-based sociologist Mareike Bünning says that families have been affected by schools and day care centers that have been shut, and that they have to take over the responsibility of caring for and educating the children. Informal caregivers, like grandparents, are also unable to help because of lockdown measures or the need to socially distance from elderly people as well as those vulnerable to COVID. Many support networks that were available earlier are now unavailable.
"The crucial things the virus has taught us is that we are all dependent on each other," according to Lynne Segal in her essay "Ageing Matters," published in The Dictionary of Coronavirus Culture edited by Alan Bradshaw and Joel Hietanen. While many people have become more isolated in the last year, many others, Segal says, are spending more time with their children and grandchildren. We have all realized, in Segal's words, that "to be fully human, we all need to care as well as be cared for."
Coming together as family
The immediate family, therefore, has become practically indispensable. The key to harmonious living could be, as psychiatrist Tina Montreuil says, "to ensure that we spend quality time together where our focus is centered on being well and connected."
Laura Hartmann, a PhD student at the University of Bonn, has experienced this directly this year. A single in her early 30s, Hartmann had separate living quarters in her parents' house. That way, she says, she was close to her university and place of work. Now, the pandemic has brought her even closer to her parents.
"I am more in touch with my parents, almost every day. We eat lunch together, just for company. They're happy to see me at lunchtime and I'm happy that I'm not alone all day long. We spend time everyday together for about an hour and half."
Similarly, although the pandemic upended Christina Cortes' life last year, it has helped her appreciate her family more. Cortes lives in Oakland, in the state of West Virginia in the US and belongs to an Amish Church based there. Her community has around 200 members. Cortes herself is trained in teaching and looking after children with special needs, and also cares for her 20-year-old autistic brother.
Zijah (sitting between her parents) is trying to develop more empathyImage: Privat
Cortes was diagnosed with COVID in July 2020, one month after distressing symptoms that included fever and an upset stomach. In August, she was still testing positive for COVID and doctors were doubtful whether her positive results were because of a new infection or the old one. For weeks, Cortes was isolated with no physical contact, and that has changed her perspective on life. "It's so much more rewarding and satisfying to see someone in front of you, to communicate that way versus over the phone. That has made me appreciate so much more of what we do have and what we take for granted."
"My relationships with my mom, my sister and my brother have changed too because we are more grateful for each other." Cortes' elder sister is married to a woman and that has been a barrier in their relationship, because of their different beliefs. But the pandemic has taught her that "we can have differences but we can still talk to each other about other things, we don't have to get caught up on the smaller things."
Meanwhile, New Delhi-based Zijah Sherwani too, has learned that family is not to be taken for granted. Her parents have returned from the hospital and their relationship has taken a turn for the better. "I understood how important empathy was, no matter the situation… It's important, when it's family."