The Sheltering Night

On March 16, Bay Area counties issued "shelter in place" orders. My days were suddenly long and busy, working frantically to get my coworkers set up to work remotely. After two weeks of rarely setting foot outside, the need to escape, to get some exercise, and to make photographs, led to long walks at night with my camera and tripod, a time when the streets were eerily empty of cars and pedestrians. During these walks, I would sometimes talk or text with friends, and sometimes walk by their homes, I eventually began experimenting with photographing people inside their homes, peering out into the darkness. The results were immediately striking to me and grew into this series of portraits of friends, acquaintances, and strangers that explores the range of feelings and reactions we all had to the pandemic in the first few frightening months.