The Art of Staying Home, with Amy Touchette

Firstly how are you feeling today?

I’m good, thanks. I hope you are, too!

Tell us about your art and your studio.

I’m a photographer who specializes in street portraits, so my “studio” is outside, on the streets, in public areas—and some private if I can manage it, inside stores, diners, etc. I mainly use two cameras. To make posed pictures of people, I use a Rolleiflex 3.5f Planar, a medium-format twin lens reflex camera that produces big, luscious, soulful square film negatives. To make candid pictures of people in traditional street photography fashion, when being quick and relatively invisible is everything, I use an iPhone 6 SE, a cameraphone small enough I can take a picture with one hand. 

Do you normally work from home?

Yes, I support myself partly by writing about photography for magazines and other publications, so when I’m not outside photographing, I’m home in my office either dealing with the other side of photography—editing, sequencing, organizing, submitting, social media and administrative stuff, etc.—or writing on assignment. Since I’m freelance, I usually have enough leeway with deadlines that photography can still be my focus without leaning on it too hard financially. It’s been a great combination so far, and I hope, hope, hope it continues to be viable. 

How has your day to day life changed since COVID-19?

Each day seems like a universe unto itself, dominated by a particular emotion or thought, depending on that day’s news. I live in New York City, so it’s been about two weeks since the government started restricting our movement and behavior. Like many other places in the world, we’ve been asked to stay inside as much as possible and distance ourselves from others when we do have to go out. For “the city that never sleeps,” that’s a death of sorts. We are so used to living our lives out on the sidewalk and among crowds. I am definitely lonelier, so a lot of my day is about managing that and maybe even taking advantage of it. Only in the past day or two has the shock of the change started to wear off, and I feel like I can focus, at least somewhat, again. I assume I will go through a lot of different stages as this plays out. There is still a lot of mystery about the future. The worst is yet to come, they say, and I worry for all of us. 

What are you doing creatively to stay calm and mindful?

I’m trying to be as forgiving with myself as possible, letting myself be taken away by the event until I’m done processing whatever portion of it is unfolding. I’m not putting pressure on myself to do anything I don’t want to do, and as a striving New Yorker, that is quite a feat. I’m sleeping until I wake up. And when my boyfriend gets up some hours later (he’s a musician who works in a studio in our basement), we spend a couple of hours starting his day together, thankful to be next to another living breathing human being. In the afternoon, I do yoga and then hopefully go for a walk, which we are still allowed to do for exercise if we social distance. 

As a street photographer, being able to walk helps a lot in managing the situation, just by normalizing life a little, but of course it’s also the worst case scenario, too, with so much of street life disappeared. I can, and have been, photographing people from a distance of six feet, but there are far fewer encounters with people (obviously), and people are scared of getting close to one another, including me. That just creates a really strange energy on the street; the antithesis of the community that street photography ideally fosters. We have been asked to disconnect from each other physically, and I worry about the long-term effects of that. All of the handshakes, hugs, kisses, high-fives, whispers, conversations within regular talking distance, etc. that are simply lost now, never to take place as they were meant to. If this goes on for as long as it might, that’s a huge pile of affection we will have lost. 

For my own habitual need to connect, I do smile and/or say hello to anyone I encounter who will engage with me. I also call at least one person a day to check in with them, whether they are family, neighborhood folks, or friends. Skyping, texting, calling, Zooming, letter writing—whatever it takes to be together—helps tremendously.

Yesterday out of loneliness I looked through all of the portraits I made for my most recent series, street portraits of the long-time residents of my adopted neighborhood, Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, which I began in 2015. And just reliving all the memories of the people I’ve met in this neighborhood made me feel so much better. Seeing all their smiling faces, interactions like these are what have sustained me and fortified me over the years. A thread by which to take in the world so things don’t get too confusing, if that makes sense. The personal connections I make with people on the street are gratifying in a way that’s totally different than the deep relationships I form with friends, family, and lovers, but they are equally as heartwarming and equally as essential. Reliving these photographic experiences made me think: We can get through this. We can be resilient if we want to be.

Do you have any creative ideas for people to do at home?

I’m going to reveal just how stereotypical a photographer I am, but now seems like a great time to get family photo albums back on track. Not just because most people don’t take the time to print their personal memories anymore—let alone assemble them in some sort of sequential book—but because actually going through all those photos, seeing all those people you love, reliving all those memories, may very well make you feel less alone, just like going through my photos of Bed-Stuy residents did for me. I always think you are what you see, just like you are what you eat, and just conjuring the presence of the people you love, especially in a time of instability and fear, could be the exact company people need right now. 

What do you think the world will have learned from this?

I think the world has learned how imperative it is to listen to one another, including mother nature. In essence, that’s why we’ve ended up here. We are still in a deep need to listen. We are in emergency mode, and it has only just begun. Everyone should be listening to the causes and effects that are playing out so we can learn to combat it together, using each other’s experiences and resources collectively to solve this. 

Obviously the world will learn so much more as time goes on. It’s too early to guess what exactly, but in my wildest dreams, it’s the realization that we can make life on earth a paradise if we want to. If we can learn to work together globally, we can definitely do that; there are the resources. It’s just a matter of whether humans want it enough to work for it. And we do want it. I know we do, because I see that in the streets time and time again. It’s why I keep returning.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Thank you nurses, doctors, hospital administrative staff, pharmacists, and medical researchers. Thank you EMT, firefighters, and police officers. Thank you transportation workers, cashiers at grocery stores, delivery people, and all other essential workers who have little to no training in and resources for protecting themselves, who in fact show up for work because they will get fired if they don’t. Thank you to leaders like Governor Cuomo of New York State, whose firm but human command at this time couldn’t be more needed and appreciated. Thank you Jules and everyone at Blank White Space and elsewhere who are donating their time and resources for this campaign. And thank you to all the people who return my smile on the street. You keep my heart from shrinking. 

Street Dallies ”Dekalb Avenue, Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn” by Amy Touchette