Together Apart: Life in Lockdown

Authors: Jude van Daalen & Belinda Jackson

What started as a conversation over the back fence to break the solitude of lockdown has grown into a friendship and a partnership between portrait photographer Jude van Daalen and her next-door neighbour journalist Belinda Jackson.

Photographed written and printed in Melbourne Together Apart is Jude and Belinda's black-and-white coffee table book featuring 60 portraits of people in their neighbourhood: the lollipop lady waiting for the children who never come a chilling experience of a COVID ward the families separated by borders.

We also hear from the barista serving up caffeine and counselling the students dreaming of returning to their classrooms after six months of homeschooling and the children rediscovering the rainbows ancient trees and fairy gardens in their streets as the world slowed.

Together Apart tells stories from Melbourne's lockdown

When COVID-19 hit Melbourne harder than a runaway tram our lives changed - literally overnight. New book Together Apart gives a glimpse into life in lockdown capturing the isolation frustration hope humour and human need for togetherness that quickly became part of our daily lives.

Buy Now: lockdownstories.com.au

Together Apart: Life in Lockdown
Authors Jude van Daalen & Belinda Jackson
December 2020 RRP $79

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Jason Steger Review

Jude van Daalen and Belinda Jackson are neighbours but they didn't know each other well. That is not until lockdown unlocked a friendship and creative partnership that bloomed across their back fence and led to their new book documenting life in their western suburbs community in a year that changed life as we know it in Melbourne.

Together Apart illustrates through images and words the experience of isolation for a whole range of people. The two women took the photographs wrote the stories designed the book and finally saw the pages off the presses.

The day after the first lockdown was announced was van Daalen's birthday but there wasn't much to be happy about. She had to close her photographic studio and didn't know what she'd do.

"The same day this mum from school said that her children got 72 books from the library. I thought people are doing strange things - remember people were hoarding toilet paper at the beginning - and everything was empty. I thought this is crazy I need to capture this."

Van Daalen asked if she could take a picture of the young bibliophiles. The next day one of her friends emptied her garage and turned it into a yoga studio. "I captured it. The same time I asked people 'please tell me something what are you doing different how is this lockdown making your feel?' "

The single mum posted the pictures on Facebook and got an enthusiastic response so she thought she'd do more.

But she was getting stressed worrying about how she would survive financially and mentally. "I thought if I go down this path I'm going to get depressed. I need to do something uplifting and maybe I can help the community as well to stay positive."

At this point a chat across the fence brought travel journalist Jackson on board initially in an editing role. But when the second lockdown loomed they decided to revisit the subjects and their stories as the mood had changed.

"We pretty much rewrote the whole book" Jackson said. "People's lives hadn't stopped. People hadn't stopped dying people hadn't stopped having babies people's lives were still continuing but we were all trying to do it in under these rules dictated to us by COVID and by the state government."

Van Daalen says her favourite picture is of some children and their teddy bears stuck inside and looking out of their front window. "To me that one photo says eight months of lockdown."

Jackson's favourite story is that of Noelene an octogenarian they feature who remembered food rationing during the Great Depression. "She's 86 and was talking about sister and friends in an aged-care home and how people had died of neglect. She was so angry I got really worried. I thought her comments were so honest and they just showed the lack of respect that we had shown towards some people in the community."

Van Daalen says she learned a great deal about community feeling. "In the end all we want is connection and that someone cares about us. That we don't feel lonely. I felt very lonely and we all felt very connected through this."

This article by Jason Steger (Books editor) is from the November 29 issue of The Age Digital Edition.
To subscribe visit digitaleditions.com.au

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