A Photographer’s Lockdown Diary | iFeng
Jia Yanan—iFeng
Photographer Jia Yanan traveled to Kathmandu in mid-February to participate in a photo workshop. A month later, when rumor had it that Kathmandu was entering a citywide lockdown, she made the decision to stay longer in order to finish her photo project. Little did she know that she’d spend four more months there, as her flights back to China were cancelled eight times. Friendships Jia made with others who were also stranded and volunteering in a makeshift soup kitchen gave her comfort and purpose through the unprecedented lockdown. Jia spent three days in jail for taking photos at a protest against the Nepali government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis on June 13. Without her camera, Jia wrote and doodled on toilet paper to document her time in jail, which for safekeeping she gave to a friend who visited her each day. In her four-month lockdown diary, she pairs self-portraits, photos of friends, and snapshots in the streets with hand-written diary entries and the rising numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Nepal.
Caption information
Photographer Jia Yanan traveled to Kathmandu in mid-February to participate in a photo workshop. A month later, when rumor had it that Kathmandu was entering a citywide lockdown, she made the decision to stay longer in order to finish her photo project. Little did she know that she’d spend four more months there, as her flights back to China were cancelled eight times. Friendships Jia made with others who were also stranded and volunteering in a makeshift soup kitchen gave her comfort and purpose through the unprecedented lockdown. Jia spent three days in jail for taking photos at a protest against the Nepali government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis on June 13. Without her camera, Jia wrote and doodled on toilet paper to document her time in jail, which for safekeeping she gave to a friend who visited her each day. In her four-month lockdown diary, she pairs self-portraits, photos of friends, and snapshots in the streets with hand-written diary entries and the rising numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Nepal.