Year Zero: Lockdown Journal: Lockdown Journal

In early December, 2019, news came from China of a number of cases of pneumonia with no known cause and no vaccine. On January 1st, 2020, the first death was reported. On January 7^th China identified the virus as COVID-19. January 21st was the first confirmed case in America. Wuhan went into a complete lockdown on January 23rd. On February 4th the American based Diamond Princess cruise ship was quarantined in Yokohama Bay. Italy ordered a lockdown of the Lombardy region on Feb 26th. And most people in the USA still weren't paying attention. A state of affairs that wouldn't last much longer. I began the YEAR ZERO LOCKDOWN JOURNAL on March 20, 2020, the first day of the Los Angeles lockdown. I ended it a year later on March 19th, 2021. On the first day of lock down I took my bicycle and camera and rode through the empty, silent streets of Los Angeles. Everything looked the same, but everything was completely different. I took photos and came back and wrote about it. And I kept it up for next twelve months, through our personal and collective isolation, through the ups and downs of the pandemic, the slow, halting opening of society, the politicization of the virus, the George Floyd protests, the elections, the Stop-the-Steal movement, and the storming of the Capital. Some of the most intense George Floyd and Stop-the-Steal protests happened at the police headquarters and City Hall a few blocks from where I live. I had a front row seat - with a camera and a pen. Covid-19 was beyond anything we thought possible or could even imagine. It's the stuff of science fiction and dystopian nightmares. But the writers and doomsayers were right. And here we are. Each of us who have lived through Year Zero have our own stories to tell. This, in photographs and texts, is mine.