The Picturing Lockdown Collection was created during April and May 2020, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. During seven days the public were asked to submit photographs that they felt best represented their experiences of lockdown in England, and from these submissions one hundred representing all the different geographic regions were chosen to be archived with Historic England. Alongside these images, ten artists were commissioned to produce their own images over the course of five days, representing their lockdown experience. These were supplemented with images by Historic England’s own photographers. Together, the Picturing Lockdown collection forms a permanent visual record of this unusual time in history.
This photograph, taken at 12.10 on 29th April 2020, is the first of five images depicting the lockdown as experienced by the artist Bella Milroy, and represents the East Midlands region. The artist has written the following text to explain how this image documents their experience of lockdown: "'Taking Dor For a Walk (a vicarious endeavour)' captures both a moment of departure and a record of continued remain. Life trickles outside of the walls of my home throughout the day, returning in the forms of a dog walked or a partner at the end of a long shift. The barriers and parameters to our home feel greater and yet harder to define; to know what feels safe and what doesn’t, who feels safe and who doesn’t. I find myself extending the arms of care further than they ever have done before, stretching far beyond my body to the point at which we don’t even touch. Support is found in foods cooked and Doris taken out, admin written and prescriptions picked up (the scary bits). I just have to reach underneath these grubby window pains for a hug in the form of a smile or tone of voice, and in this know that wrapped up in these little acts of love and care, my feet move alongside hers when she’s trotting beside the stream down at the bottom near our house - its just that I’m doing it from home. I know that she’ll tell me all about it when she gets back all soggy and hot, her lizard tongue unfurled and small face grinning; these little moments of arrival trickling into the house again, topping up the home with life like a shallow pond with foamy frogspawn."
This is part of the Volume: HEC01/036/02/06 Picturing Lockdown Collection: Artists' Submissions - Bella Milroy; within the Sub Series: HEC01/036/02 Picturing Lockdown Collection - Artists' Submissions; within the Series: HEC01/036 Picturing Lockdown Collection; within the Collection: HEC01 Historic England
© Bella Milroy
Photographer: Milroy, Bella
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