correspondence

To correspond is to communicate. It is also to relate, match in similarity. Correspondence serves as a means of communication, connecting the words and images of the past to our own experience with Covid-19.  

The left-facing pages of the publication contain words and images from the 1918 Spanish flu. These are remnants of a time long since forgotten and yet they ring all too familiar in the present. The right-facing pages are the echoes of the past that have found their place in the current age. Two different worlds, 1918 and 2020, have a dialogue through time; a correspondence.  

The common thread that binds them finds its place among the publication, literally represented by the ‘curve’ of the 1918 pandemic which so closely resembles the one of today.  Its calm meandering belies its deadly nature. At the end of the publication the curve subsides, and yet, its final act is to fire off in a reckless angle and betray the mercy the viewer is meant to feel.

Correspondence is the shared language of the pandemic and the reflection of our cyclical existence.