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The interests of visual sociologists are as wide as the field of sociology itself. The only thing that distinguishes them from their colleagues is their sustained commitment to using images as a form of social data and as a medium of reporting research findings.

John Grady, Becoming a Visual Sociologist

A Week of Social Quarantine Project

In the spring of 2020, we have asked various people worldwide to take pictures for a period of one week of their (social) quarantine: each day one picture – whatever they think is important to be captured from the camera lenses.

Then, we conducted (online) photo-elicitation interviews (based on the pictures) in order to get to know how they spend, perceive and value this particular time.

The digital exhibition presents some of the images and comments, provided by the project partners from different places around the globe – from California to Minsk.

While tracking the sociological dimensions of global pandemics and compulsory isolation, we were trying to find out, what it means to be under social quarantine.

Students of Visual Sociology class & Ludmila Wladyniak (project supervisor, Faculty of Humanities, Charles University)

Pines on the blue sky background is the most beautiful scenery for me. It's my childhood in Belarus, my trips to Jurmala (Latvia) and India. Tanya, 31, Moscow, Russia

The girl that I like told me that she thinks she looks like a squirrel and she feels connected to them so when I see this guy outside my window I take a picture and send it to her to let her know her friend visited me. Ivy, 21, California, USA

Suddenly I found myself in a situation where I had nothing to do since both of my job places and school closed due to the pandemic. I helped my mum with making face masks so my days didn't seem dreary and everlasting. Linda, 20, Czechia

Everything has changed, in terms of the number of people and cars on the street, usually [in order to cross] you have to look left-right, left- right and again before you’re then hit by a taxi [laughs]. During this time, you can just walk straight out because there’s no one around…. The sky is incredibly vivid, there’s no pollution, especially at this time of the year, it's incredibly different because the plant life, the trees are coming to life...I never really noticed the smells before but I do now...and without any traffic in the streets, and production in the factories or whatever (…) Jack, 61, Prishtina, Kosovo

For me there’s two sides of quarantine: one the one hand, I really like it, cause I figured out, that my basic lifestyle calls self-isolation, but now no one can judge me for it because of this, but on the other hand, I’m a photographer and the pandemic deprived me my only source of income, so I’m in a permanent state of anxiety. Martin, 27, Czechia

When the doctors came to take our mom to the hospital, we did not fully understand what was happening at that moment. We wanted to believe that it was something else, less intimidating. We were scared yet curious, as it was something that had never happened to our family before. Everything at that moment seemed very unusual, even exсiting, in a way. Alina, 19, Minsk, Belarus

This picture shows an electronics store. My phone broke and I had to buy a new one. This was actually the first time that I was at the store durig the quarantine and that was the first time that i saw the consequences of the lockdown and quarantine in real life. I got used to being under lockdown but this was the first time that I saw the restricting measures and social distancing in real life. It was scary and interesting at the same time. You know, I wasn’t used to it, but I was surprised how well effective all the rules were. Jiri, 20, Prague, Czechia

The second one was done while I was doing my homework. One of the hardest ones [homeworks]. I even did it twice. But at the end I succeeded… it was an early morning after sleepless night. [On the photo there is] Tea with sweets…. so what... Nastya, 19, Russia

We used to do this a few years back, when we were younger and we had nowhere to hang out, we would go inside these pontoons. So now due to quarantine we revisited them. Milan, 20, Bratislava, Slovakia

During quarantine, we weren't using public transport, but we were riding our bikes a lot, surfing many interesting routes and beautiful places around. Maria, 46, Czechia

It's just, you know, we don't receive many phone calls these days, so instead of just waiting for a call, I thought I could use this time in a more productive way – and I started to paint. And so I waiting and painting and working and painting... Everything is slower now, you know. Marcello, 23, London, UK

...they all came one by one to sniff me, one of them even comes to get scratched now... Alice, 28, Savoie, France