Gazing through the window: A participatory Covid-19-exhibition for a nation in crisis

Abstract

This visual essay focuses on the digital exhibition ‘Hold Still. A portrait of our Nation in 2020’ by the National Portrait Gallery in London. Regarding a visual social analysis of the Covid-19-pandemic, two main aspects are relevant: first, the project shows new modes of image creation, collection, and presentation. Based on a public call for pictures with more than 31 000 submissions, people contributed to the visualization of the pandemic. Second, 100 images were selected and exhibited in the form of a photoblog. This compilation constitutes a specific way of seeing a nation in crisis. The exhibition depicts one object – the window – as an important symbol of the pandemic. In the form of image sets, three main categories will be presented: (1) on an aesthetic level, the window is used as a specific picture frame; (2) creating an outside and an inside, a particular form of window gaze is established, and (3) the window functions as a specific communicative medium – a connecting divider – that establishes a shared space while dividing it simultaneously. In conclusion, the photoblog can be understood as a specific form of iconic image cluster. By juxtaposing the images in the blog regarding similarities and differences, a new meaning is established. Their combination symbolizes the individual’s friction between proximity and distance, showing persons in the in-between. Instead of displaying states of personal distress, the image compilation depicts the collective struggle in a crisis, thereby establishing new forms of imagined communities.