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Our quiet year

Photographer Gemma Levine asked people for their thoughts on the Covid-19 crisis. The result is a fascinating book of portraits

March 4, 2021 15:27
Dame Maureen Lipman
2 min read

For some of the people featured in photographer Gemma Levine’s new book, the pandemic year offered a chance for serious reflection. For others it was a reprise from a social whirl.

Covid Thoughts — published this week — was conceived, says Levine, “flipping through papers, with so many people giving their stories on how they were coping with their own Covid thoughts and dramas, I thought it was an opportune moment to approach some famous personalities about their own experiences.” She also wanted to raise awareness of and raise funds for research into lymphoedema, which she suffers from. In the book she emphasises the importance of our lymphatic systems in fighting Covid-19.

Her son, Professor James Levine adds an afterword: “This book captures many flavours of the human spirit,” he writes, “how people dealt with new challenges in their own ways.” Some of the photographs were taken in person, outdoors, others were snapped via Facetime or come from her archive. The result is a fascinating whisk through all kinds of aspects of pandemic life, offering a glimpse behind the scenes of various British institutions, and into many lives.

Take Dame Maureen Lipman, temporarily unable to carry on in Coronation Street during the first lockdown.