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I had reported on wars in the Balkans and Afghanistan before. They waged wars in which journalists – often foolishly – convinced themselves that they had a chance to recognize dangers and avoid them.
But in the British war on Covid-19, the days I spent as a freelance photojournalist in the intensive care unit at Homerton Hospital in east London were dangerous with every breath. The project for the New York Times documenting the nation’s fight against the coronavirus was terrifying and impressive. Terrifying because of possible exposure to an invisible killer who killed over 120,000 people in the UK and over 2.5 million lives worldwide. Awe-inspiring because I saw the remarkable courage, professionalism and sheer strength of the medical staff whose daily routine brought them to the threshold of life and death.
Even the most advanced modern medicine does not offer magical cures. For those who can’t make it out of the intensive care unit, there is only death. This is the last stop. What remained after that was the fear in people’s eyes as they joined what might be the final battle. The responsibility for the medical staff is enormous.
As Britain approaches gradual easing of its most draconian lockdown and secures access to vaccines for millions of people, images of this end conflict don’t easily fit the official narrative.
Many Britons are probably unaware of the brutal reality of the ICU: the constant beeping of monitors everywhere; staff rushed to turn patients over or “tilt” them to make it easier for them to breathe; the overly short breaks, the frenetic activities give way.
It took months to raise awareness. My editors – Gaia Tripoli in London and David Furst in New York – and researcher Amy Woodyatt and I called hospitals, funerals, crematoriums, undertakers and ambulance depots to get access to chronicles at this moment of the pandemic, only to be turned down . We have often been told that photography is incompatible with the dignity of the dead.
Eventually some agreed to cooperate and after seeing their work we started putting together a portfolio to tell the story of the British struggle. We wanted our images to reflect more than one area of London or one ethnic group. The list of subjects grew from a nursing home in Scarborough on the northeast coast to an undertaker in the English Midlands to people engaged in Islamic and other rites in the capital.
With this assignment came a new and unfamiliar set of ground rules and procedures designed to protect not just me but the people around me – both at work and at home.
In the intensive care unit in Homerton, they called it “putting on and taking off” personal protective equipment. I exchanged my day clothes for scrubs and a surgical gown. a tight fitting mask and protective goggles; Overshoes; and a hair covering. I’ve reduced my equipment to two cameras. And at the end of the shooting, I followed a very strict protocol developed by the ICU staff for removing protective equipment.
When I got home, I washed all of my clothes, took a shower, cleaned the equipment with antiviral wipes, and exposed it to UVC light disinfectant. I was not eligible for the vaccination, but had a precautionary coronavirus test during the mission, which turned out negative.
In the end, I told myself, I just had to trust my equipment. But there are always nagging doubts. The coronavirus scares you twice: first, by its ability to infect you personally, and second, by the overwhelming fear that you might accidentally pass it on to your family.
There is no question about its power. On my second day in the intensive care unit in Homerton, two people died within 25 minutes. Usually, medical authorities try to give family members access to say goodbye. But for patients in induced coma and beyond hope, it is a cruel one-sided goodbye exchange.
And yet the counter-image of devotion is always there, just as clearly in these images as the losses. As one survivor noted, medical teams always go one step further. “You are blessed,” he said.
