Capturing the Quarantine
The featured images are from Morgan McDonald’s project, Until Further Notice.
Pickerington High School North alumna photographs community during pandemic
By Lydia Freudenberg
S
pringtime is normally welcomed with patio brunches, baseball games and endless community events. This year, springtime was practically silent. Even in the darkest days of the quarantine, there was a story itching to be told. Morgan McDonald, Pickerington High School North alumna and current art education and art history student at The Ohio State University, felt she had to tell it. It resulted in a project titled Until Further Notice.
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The black-and-white photographic series features community businesses with empty parking lots, residents wearing masks and gloves, and people maintaining six-foot distances from one another. “Artists throughout time have drawn inspiration from major historical events like these, and as a visual artist myself, I just knew I couldn’t let this opportunity to capture the small moments in our community slip away,” McDonald says. Even though McDonald says the series is open to interpretation, she hopes that when locals view the im-
ages, they feel a sense of community and a collective sense of shared experiences and impact. “My hope is that community members realize their individual worth,” she says. “There is power in the individual experience, and that is why there is importance in leaving things up for interpretation. No two stories in this time are the same.” The series isn’t just visually impactful, it’s also a historical documentation of the pandemic. McDonald cites the common journalistic phrase that what isn’t captured is invisible. www.pickeringtonmagazine.com
