Quarantine in East Austin

In March of 2020, the city of Austin issued a stay-at-home order to try and stop the spread of COVID-19. Over the next several months, my neighbors in East Austin found ways to connect while following the quarantine guidelines. We started a nightly sing-along, gathering in our masks on on the street and singing off-key, but delighted with a few minutes of company. And walks in the neighborhood became social events as neighbors gathered on their porches, waving and talking from a safe distance.

Soon after, I began to document this experience, trying to capture the conflicting senses of isolation and camaraderie that came from talking to friends that couldn’t leave their porches to come to the sidewalk. And to archive our neighborhood as gentrification slowly changed its character. I discovered that while the homes and families were changing, there was an emerging, new community that was just as vibrant and diverse…of artists, college professors, musicians, writers, dancers, tech professionals and original hispanic families blending together to create an authentic Austin neighborhood. I wasn’t just documenting a neighborhood in lockdown, I was capturing images of this embryonic community that was still finding ways to grow together even as COVID forced up invisible walls between our homes.