Lived Through This

On February 11, 2021, for the first time in 335 days, my fifth grader walked back in for his last “first day” of elementary school. The night before his return I found myself looking back over the year in photos in my Instagram feed, peppered with tags such as #TheNewNormal, #TheCovidLife. After almost a year, I’m not clear if anything feels “normal” to me.

I’m a photographer and a writer in Columbus, Ohio, and a documentarian for my city, my home — sometimes with words, always with photographs. On Friday, March 13, 2020, the day the world seemed to come…