THOSE LIVING IN BETWEEN Lily was the first to go. She fought to stay, arguing that she had spent too much time, too many tears and too many dreams on studying at the Danish School of Media and Journalism to go home, especially when precautions were already being taken in Denmark to limit the virus’ spread. Her home university was adamant. Refusal would result in the loss of financial aid, the backbone that props up any American college student’s hope for an education. So, she went home. She went home, and I started making pictures. I turned my lens on my fellow students—my new friends—during a time of stress and uncertainty when many of them would be called back to their home countries and forced to leave Denmark. We had received strict orders from our mentors regarding the pictures we could make. Continue social distancing practices. No entering subjects’ rooms or places of work. No in-person interviews.
Maintain our space whenever possible. I did my best to translate that into the photographs, often forcing myself to stand far away from them and use a long lens to create an artificial closeness. That was the most difficult part. When smiles turned to tears and laughing turned to longing, I could not hug my friends. I could not touch them, and I could not comfort them. And they could not comfort me as I processed my own emotions. This is what the virus took away from us, long before anyone had to go home. This project began with the desire to document my fellow students during this time—a time when they were caught between one home and another. Like many projects do, it quickly evolved into something else. As more and more people left, and as I received my own phone call ordering me to return to the United States, this series became something much more personal than documentation: it became a way to say goodbye, to wonderful people I may never see again.
Tristen Rouse
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