PICTORIAL STORY
July 31, 2020
PANDEMIC POETRY
Photo collages and story by Victoria González García
Introduction by Melanie Meggs
Victoria González García has an eye for capturing beauty and a heart for portraying social issues. This Argentinian photographer based in Madrid, is no stranger to using her art to make a statement. During the Covid-19 pandemic crisis, she sought out to use her camera to capture an issue that has come to represent this tumultuous period – the pollution caused by discarded protective masks and gloves. Through a project of visual poetry, Victoria has made it her mission to bring attention to this all-too-common problem. Follow her personal account as she shines a light on the environmental effects of this pandemic.
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From the first moment the Covid-19 health emergency was declared in Madrid, I began to record everything. The declaration caught me in the middle of the city. On the way back to my house on my bike I stopped and took pictures of everything that was happening around me.
Madrid, the city where there is a bar on every corner, where people are out and about no matter what time it is, the city that exudes vitality and noise; a city where, little by little, a science fiction film was beginning, my city, being silenced right in front of my eyes.
As the days went by on my trips to the supermarket, once a week, I began to notice that the streets were getting dirtier and dirtier and that the urban waste was no longer the same. It had changed. I began to feel that space had mutated completely.
It was impossible not to see the plastic masks and gloves, of all colors and sizes, that were polluting every space on the sidewalk or street, flying and pirouetting in the wind. I felt the need to immortalize everything that my eyes saw in amazement. Due to the great capacity of transmission of the coronavirus, the obligatory use of disposable masks and gloves, and the bad waste management practices of their users, the contamination of our planet seemed to grow and grow, overflowing.
The pandemic changed some of our daily habits. We were locked up and we were supposed to generate less waste, but the opposite happened. During the course of the quarantine I observed many profiles on social networks with different photo postings that referred to trips and, for the most part, all proclaimed the urgency of being outdoors, of living with nature. How contradictory and ironic it is to desire those sites, but to do nothing to care for them and preserve them. This is how POETICS OF THE PANDEMIC was born, a visual reflection of the 50 days that the quarantine lasted in Madrid.
In the project I use my own photographs and some in the public domain, as well as videos with still images. I counterpose images of the waste generated in the pandemic with natural scenarios, looking for a complementarity and, at the same time, a visual reflection of this great problem that grows hand in hand with Covid-19. The coronavirus will pass, but the rubbish will stay. The idea of using images in the public domain was born out of the impossibility of traveling and moving to places outside my home.
I use visual poetry as an instrument, an experimental form in which the image, in all its facets, prevails over the other components, taking into account that artistic creation is already a discourse in itself. The isolation made me go through all states of mind, but through photography and art I was able to sublimate my anguish. In my personal case, it was a time of much productivity: I took up old projects and developed others. Among these is this project, with which I wish to generate awareness through my photographs, about the use and disposal, mainly, of those elements that protect us against the spread of the coronavirus.
This is my appeal to society, to people's sense of responsibility and individual conscience, so that they no longer throw these disposable elements on the public streets. Since masks and gloves can generate not only a health problem (since some pathogens use garbage as a vector for spreading), but also a big ecological problem, especially in the marine ecosystem. There is already evidence from non-governmental organizations that the oceans are suffering from the ravages of Covid-19.
In addition to the existing problem of ocean pollution with microplastics, there is now the sad fact that the waste from the pandemic is being added to the problem. Gloves and masks are not biodegradable, so they can remain in our seas for hundreds of years. As I said a few lines above: the coronavirus will pass, but the rubbish will not. This is also part of the pandemic's impact.
The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in the text belong solely to the author, and are not necessarily shared by The Pictorial List and the team.
