How Do We Live Now?

In mid-2020 I came across yet another set of statistics on Covid-19 infection rates and deaths. Once again I wondered why so few people were asking what really lay behind those numbers—what was happening to our psyche from the start of the pandemic. Questions about loss, isolation, remote work or the absence of work, about children and so much more, remained mere footnotes to the statistics.

That’s how the idea for the project How Do We Live Now? was born, unfolding along two parallel lines. On one side, I wanted to give voice to those who work with our innermost worlds but were curiously overlooked in the public debate: professionals in the field of mental health. At the same time, I photographed the daily life of my own family in our old family house, a place steeped in stories and memories.

For How Do We Live Now? I met with carefully selected psychologists, psychiatrists, and psychotherapists. In our conversations, I invited them to share their reflections on our inner experiences during the Covid crisis, which continues even today. I myself needed to place my own thoughts, fears, and desires within a broader context.

The therapist’s profession is a quiet one; many who practice it avoid public appearances, preferring to remain in the background. I am therefore grateful to the participants who trusted me enough to let me enter the delicate spaces where they work with the most subtle layers of our psyche. My encounters with these professionals were vivid and intimate, taking place in their offices or in their homes, from which they also worked online. Who are these people? How do they manage to engage with our anxiety while coping with their own?

The project How Do We Live Now? is at once a deep analysis of us all, a portrait of these women and men on the front line of the soul, and a revelation of the intimate moments of vulnerability within my own family during isolation.