Items

• 
  2021-05-18

  Changes during the pandemic

  I chose this photo because of the differences between a before and after the pandemic. I took the first photo from Google, from an article titled "What Keeps People Coming Back to a Restaurant?" (Carol Lin Vieira) because I do not have an old one where access to eat was allowed, since for me it was common. The second photo was taken at my current job, it is located at 2065 Jerome Ave, Bronx, NY 10453. Before the pandemic started, we could go out and share with our families and friends, we could order food and eat in the restaurant, hang out, have fun and laugh, no need to be making reservations all the time. The pandemic changed our lives in a whole new way. Before we could be in groups and go to the park without the need to worry about whether other people could infect us. We had so much more fun because we didn't have to worry about whether restaurants would be open or not, whether we could go out and eat quietly away from home. During the pandemic, we can no longer do these kinds of things because we are separated. This is something sad, not being able to see your friends or family for fear of infecting us or infecting the people we love. Not being able to shake hands, give hugs, kisses on the face or share our food with other people. It makes me nostalgic to see how in my work the tables are empty and it is forbidden to eat, to remember how the restaurant was full with many people who laughed and told how their day, shared stories or dated someone. It is hard to listen to the sad voices of the customers when they ask when they can go eat. As I mentioned earlier, COVID-19 left many losses and many broken hearts along the way, it is a disease in which it showed us the value that each person has. Sometimes as teenagers we do not realize what we have, I chose this photo as an example of how little we valued the little things before and now we really need it. A single walk without a mask, sitting in large groups with your family in a restaurant, being next to someone who has already died due to this disease, among many other details. I think everything happens for a reason and from something so negative we learned something positive, we learned to appreciate the little things in life, to be more united with the family and to love more every day.
• 
  2020-04-12

  One Way to See Family During a Worldwide Crisis

  Primary Source Essay Wildania Hernandez The primary source I’m using for this project is a picture of my family on a zoom call celebrating my father’s birthday on march 12, 2020. This is how my family and myself had to gather together to actually spend some time since the virus started. Our family is a very united family, we are very close and before COVID-19 started we used to get together in somebody’s house and just cook and dance and talk, and enjoy every second of it but everything changed when the virus started it was spreading too fast, and everybody was scared. I remember how my mom was always watching the news and you could see all the videos of all those people that died in Queens and they had so many bodies that they didn't have a place to put them. Funeral homes were full and all I could think was about those families who lost a loved one and how some people were thinking that COVID was fake. The first time we use zoom was to celebrate my father’s birthday, it was something new and not something like we usually do but at least we got to see some of our family members. We were always home since we stopped working because of the pandemic. We used to work for a medical transportation company so we were “Essentials Workers”, we transport people to get dialysis treatment 3 times a week and after the virus started to get stronger we had to stop working because almost every patient we transported died of COVID-19 before the wave of summer even started. Sadly the COVID ended the life of two members in my family, at the end of June we got the news that one of my aunts was at the hospital on life support, three weeks later one of my uncle was in the same situation. We couldn't see them or say goodbye, everything just happened so fast that we were in shock and this is how we started our “Weekly zoom meetings”. The reason why I selected this source is because I want to show historians of the future how families use to communicate in a group without getting together. We used this tool to so much that we had an schedule, every Friday we had a zoom meeting to just talk about our week. To talk about our different point of view of the pandemic and not only that but all of the events that happened last year, like the protest that started shortly after George Floyd was killed, and the election in November but most importantly those zoom meetings was just to make sure that everybody was good and to support each other since some of my family members were still working outside. Crazy how everything started last year and now we have a vaccine and hopefully everything will go back to normal in no time but for now we need to live with the memory of what started in the year 2020 that affected the whole world.
• 
  2020-12-31

  I could not hug my mother

  For my primary source, I selected a screenshot of me and my mom while we talked through Facetime. In this facetime we were in the same house but unable to see each other in person since she was infected with the covid-19 virus. Apparently, my mother became ill with covid-19 while celebrating the end of 2020 with close relatives, they were around 6 members of my family and they decided to go celebrate that day since they had not seen each other for a long time. That day I was working at night and cannot go to the party. Well, on the first of January I couldn't go to my house either since my co-workers called out and I had to do a double shift. I left the first of January around 3:00 pm from my work, before arriving at my house my mother called me and told me that she was not feeling well and that she believed that she was infected with covid because she had all the symptoms related to this virus. She went to do the test so I went to my girlfriend's house to wait for my mother to call me to confirm what we already suspected, around 5:00 pm she called me to tell me that she, my aunt and my cousin were positive . We could not leave our house for 16 days and only seeing each other through Facetime. I remember we took turns using the kitchen or leaving our rooms. To use the bathroom, we each entered with a Lysol to disinfect before and after using it. We used gloves and a mask when we left our rooms, so that I would not get infected. Today, 5 months later, my mother is still suffering the consequences of being infected, she gets tired when she walks for a long time and is in training since she has bacteria in the lungs as a result of covid-19. I decided to select this screenshot as my source because it represents what many people went through during the pandemic. Family that lasted months without seeing each other when before the pandemic they saw each other every day and grandparents without knowing their newborn grandchildren were some of the scenes that we could see during the pandemic. I am the only son of my mother and we have a remarkably close relationship. Never in our lives would we have lasted so long without seeing each other in person and without having hugged each other, it was very painful.
• 
  2020-06-04

  The Doctors and the Community

  I'm submitting a picture of doctors, including my uncle and members of the community gathered outside of the SUNY Downstate Medical Center University Hospital, to celebrate the discharge of a patient who beat Covid-19.
• 
  2020-04

  Covid Portraits: Allston

  I decided to do a series of portraits of family members in masks to document the pandemic.
• 
  2020-04

  Covid Portraits: Los Angeles

  I decided to do a series of portraits of family members in masks to document the pandemic.