New York Times photographers covered Covid-19 throughout the world. These pictures, and the moments behind them, stayed with them.
The New York Times asked 19 photographers to revisit their most enduring images of the coronavirus pandemic, five years after the virus became a global threat. Their photographs transport us to that bewildering period in an uncanny sort of time travel.
The journalists who captured these scenes were not just covering the Covid-19 story but living through it. To bear witness at a time of lockdowns and isolation, they had to be in the world, navigating fear and uncertainty.
The images evoke how we felt and what we lost, as well as human resilience and connection at a time of crisis.
The first cases
Hong Kong, January 2020
One night in January 2020, the Food and Health Bureau of Hong Kong announced that a male traveller from Wuhan, China, had a fever and was suspected of being infected with the novel coronavirus.
I rushed by high-speed rail to the hospital where the patient was. It was crowded with journalists. By a back door, paramedics were in full protective gear. Eventually, he was wheeled out on a stretcher. We were so close that I could see his sweat. He was transferred to an isolation hospital, where he later tested positive. – Lam Yik Fei
Locked down and isolated
Sao Paulo, March 2020
I had returned on the fourth lockdown day to Brazil from Argentina, where I had been working on a story about jaguars, barely making it before the airport closed. After a day in search of images, I visited my old neighbourhood to photograph an empty barbershop. A friend tipped me off to an apartment with a privileged view of the emblematic Copan building, where thousands live in Sao Paulo.
I arrived on the terrace late that afternoon. I waited for nightfall and the lights in the dozens of studios gradually came on. Everyone was in their cubicles, living through the pandemic alone, like me. – Victor Moriyama
Dinner for one
Beijing, February 2020
Officially, Beijing had recorded a few hundred Covid cases and less than a handful of deaths in mid-February. But what did we know? A month earlier, health authorities had insisted there was no proven human-to-human transmission, only to reverse themselves.
The city felt empty. A robotic voice playing on a loop on loudspeakers recommended washing hands and avoiding crowds.
I headed to Houhai, a neighbourhood popular with locals and tourists. That evening, the place was dark and deserted except for one bar, where under a spotlight, a man sat surrounded by empty velvety couches, eating dinner out of plastic boxes. I placed my lens against the window. – Gilles Sabrié
The home visit
Cenate Sotto, Italy, March 2020
Italy was the first Western country to see its squares empty, its shops close and fear creep in. While taking precautions and following protocols, I followed the Red Cross, entering hospitals and going into private homes and even funerals. I saw fear in the eyes of victims, despair in those left behind and immense exhaustion in doctors and nurses.
The photo of Claudio Travelli is a real-life tableau of pain but also the fight for survival and the resilience of the families involved. Travelli survived, although he has not shaken off the spectre of the virus, as he confided a year later when I returned to Cenate Sotto, a town in the province of Bergamo.
“Since I got sick,” he said, “I’ve never been the same. It feels like I’ve lost 10 years of my life.” – Fabio Bucciarelli
The city of quiet
Paris, March 2020
This was Place de la Concorde, at 8am Tuesday, March 17, 2020. Normally, that would have been rush hour for one of the busiest roads in Paris, but the lockdown announcement the day before changed everything. The taxi dropped me off at Place de la Madeleine, a short walk away.
The city was immersed in an eerie silence, like that of a lunar atmosphere. As a child, I would often come here with my father for walks, and he would tell me it was one of the liveliest places in the world. This photograph was born from a silent shock, having my breath taken away. – Andrea Mantovani
Getting tested
Tampa, Florida, October 2020
My family and I had just relocated to Central Florida about eight months after leaving New York City when I found this picture in October 2020. At a drive-thru Covid testing site in Tampa, a woman’s face mirrored the anxiety of those days when people feared that an encounter with another person could potentially be lethal.
It may have been the anticipation of the test itself or the results that terrified her, but the look on her face reminded me of the height of the Aids epidemic when simply taking a test was an acknowledgment of our own mortality. – Damon Winter
Checking in
Paterson, New Jersey, March 2020
Firefighters and emergency medical technicians steeled themselves to overcome their fear and help those who needed it the most as they made home visits at the outset of the pandemic in Paterson.
It was the moment of holding a hand through the darkness. – Chang W. Lee
The treatment
Houston, July 2020
I spent about three weeks with colleagues at Houston Methodist Hospital in Texas in the summer of 2020. The hospital was opening one intensive-care unit after another to tend to the most critically ill, and we were given permission by patients and their families to follow their care.
I was sweating through plastic face shields while wearing gowns, gloves, bootees and head coverings, and cleaning my cameras with wipes used to sanitise medical equipment. This photo froze a moment when doctors and nurses came together to turn Edwin Garcia, 31, on his back. He was on a ventilator.
Until then, I did not know how much effort it took to keep a hospital running.
Garcia would suffer physical and neurological impairments after his time in the hospital – including losing the use of his left arm and hand, and requiring a cane to walk – that continue to affect him nearly five years later. – Erin Schaff
‘I love you’ twice
Los Angeles, March 2021
Dianne Gutierrez held up a family photo through glass for her father, David Gutierrez, who was in intensive care for six months. She was trying to prompt him to say the names of those in the photograph.
“Who is this?” she asked, after she peeled one photo after another from a stack and held each up to the window.
He stared with eyes wide open and said nothing.
He was a family medicine doctor serving patients in California in December 2020 when he started to develop Covid symptoms, which quickly escalated. He was transferred to Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California, and placed on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation as a last-resort therapy.
David Gutierrez was struggling to speak after months of intubation. But during this visit, with the help of a speech therapist, he uttered “I love you” to his wife and daughter.
I held on to Gutierrez’ story as a symbol of hope. He was one of the few patients I shadowed in intensive care who survived in 2021. – Isadora Kosofsky
The boat ambulance
Manacapuru, Brazil, June 2020
On March 13, 2020, a 39-year-old woman returned to Brazil from England and became the first confirmed case of Covid in the state of Amazonas. Mostly a tropical jungle, the region turned into the scene of one of the world’s worst-hit and fastest-growing epidemics, leaving its hospitals unprepared and cemeteries overwhelmed.
I visited the remote settlements on the Amazon River to document how the virus had spread through people travelling on boats from the state capital, Manaus, to these distant communities, many of which had no hospitals, doctors or even phone service.
While waiting at a small river landing in Manacapuru, a boat used as an ambulance arrived with the sick from Codajás, a community 160km farther upriver. After their long journey, now nearly dark and with little sound, they drifted into the glow of the headlights of a vehicle, waiting to transport patients to a hospital. – Tyler Hicks
A devastating toll
Los Angeles, February 2021
When this photo was taken, sunlight was entering the chapel lobby of the Continental Funeral Home in East Los Angeles through a skylight and illuminating Brianna Hernandez, an apprentice embalmer. She was working alongside other funeral home employees as they attempted to absorb the staggering influx of bodies at the height of the pandemic in Southern California.
I watched as the funeral home director and her staff adapted to the unimaginable. Church pews were replaced by rows of coffins; the cafeteria was converted into a makeshift morgue; and back-to-back funerals were held daily in the parking lot.
As I photographed Hernandez and the other workers carefully moving bodies draped in white sheets on to industrial shelving racks, I was confronted with the sobering reality of the pandemic’s devastating toll. – Alex Welsh
Overwhelming grief
New Delhi, April 2021
I was in New Delhi during a second Covid wave when I heard that hospitals were experiencing a colossal oxygen supply crisis. I was going everywhere, to hospitals and makeshift hospitals. I was seeing people in line, seeking oxygen cylinders, and patients in ambulances waiting to be admitted at government hospitals. Some were gasping for air. I saw people die for lack of oxygen when I was in the outskirts of Delhi.
This made me wonder what it was like in the cremation grounds. I went to one in the outskirts of Delhi where even the parking lot had been converted to accommodate the many bodies brought there. It was all overwhelming, but I felt I needed to convey the truth to the world through my images of the Hindu rituals, which are seen as a way to free the soul from the body.
I got myself to high ground and saw ambulances lined up. I waited for the light to fade. I photographed the flames emitting light, as if the funeral pyres were revealing the truth of what was happening in India. – Atul Loke
The burial
Mexico City, May 2020
Wait times for crematories stretched for days and were only getting worse in Iztapalapa, the most densely populated borough of Mexico City, in the late spring of 2020.
At the San Lorenzo Tezonco cemetery, gravediggers stood by on May 14, waiting for the hearses and grieving families to arrive. At the height of the crisis, many risked illness or even death because they could not afford to stay home.
We tried speaking with the family at this burial, but they declined. At that time, gatherings were not allowed, and there was still a sense of shame around the virus. – Daniel Berehulak
A shot in the arm
Moscow, December 2020
In December 2020, Russia was the first country to approve a coronavirus vaccine, an achievement that was promoted with pride on state television. Outside the hospital walls, scepticism ran deep, with surveys finding that 59% of Russians refused to take it.
Lyudmila Soboleva, a 38-year-old medic, knew firsthand from working in a hospital that Covid left patients struggling to breathe. A warm, late-afternoon light cut through the room, casting long shadows on the tiled walls when she exposed her arm to take the shot.
The Government launched a mass vaccination effort, setting up mobile clinics in shopping malls, sports halls and even in the heart of Moscow, at Red Square. Some lined up for their jabs seeking protection or to regain a feeling of normal life. Others refused, as their distrust of the Government was stronger than fear of the virus. – Sergey Ponomarev
Reconnecting through music
Stuttgart, Germany, May 2020
When I arrived in Stuttgart in the spring of 2020, it was a warm, sunny day in which many people would normally have been outside. Yet, it all felt surprisingly empty. I drove up a hill covered with vineyards to reach a location where two orchestras had created a unique way for people to reconnect with live music through intimate, one-on-one outdoor concerts.
In those sessions, a single musician played for one listener, often sparking deep emotions after months of isolation. Without words, tickets or applause, the concerts aimed to restore human connection at unexpected places. – Laetitia Vancon
A surreal season opener
Queens, New York, July 2020
The New York Mets held their season opener against the Atlanta Braves in July 2020 in a Citi Field devoid of fans. Cutouts of people were placed on the empty seats, creating a surreal backdrop for the game. Few photographers were allowed to cover the game, and we couldn’t wander far from our cordoned-off sections.
I recall feeling a flood of emotion at one point, but I can’t quite pinpoint why. Perhaps it was taking stock of all I had seen during the pandemic. Like most journalists, I was living the story we were covering, juggling the incongruities of being a parent while witnessing the devastating effects the virus had on our city.
There was a glimpse of optimism, but the reopening seemed distorted, like a new version of a recent past. – Todd Heisler
Back to school
Bangkok, February 2021
Children wearing face coverings were meditating at a morning assembly on their first day at school after Bangkok ended a second lockdown caused by a spike in Covid infections in early 2021.
I lived in Thailand through the pandemic. There were very few cases early on, and the Government quickly closed the borders and put in place strict social-distancing and mask-wearing rules. I remember feeling guilty, fearful and helpless as I watched the devastation that the pandemic caused for my friends and family in England and the United States while I was leading a relatively normal life.
Looking back, I can’t help wondering how these children remember this strange time and how the lockdowns and isolation affected them. – Adam Dean
Reunion
Old Bridge, New Jersey, March 2021
Dan Fabrizio had not seen his 95-year-old mother, Marie, in person for more than a year when they had this encounter in March 2021. She was staying in an assisted-living home in suburban New Jersey, and at that time, many retirement homes were experiencing deaths from the disease at a horrifying rate. Some lost dozens of residents from the virus in a few weeks.
I’ll never forget how happy she was to see her son and how relieved he was just to hug her. As soon as Dan Fabrizio walked into the room, he completely broke down.
“Hearing my mom’s voice in person – it just felt like, it wasn’t a recording,” he said. “It wasn’t the telephone. It wasn’t a Zoom. It was live. She got through this. I sat in my car and I cried.” – Bryan Anselm
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: The New York Times
Photographs by: The New York Times
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