MAPLEWOOD / SOUTH ORANGE, NJ — Jeremy Moss and Cat Delett, like all small nonessential business owners in the state, had to shut down the projects they were working on with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown. But the owners of Good Crowd Events, a community art company, adapted and created a project they can do from their homes: a community photo journal documenting how everyday life has changed during the pandemic.
“Like so many other small businesses, especially creative ones, we couldn’t do what we were doing,” Delett said in a phone interview on April 10. “So we came up with this. It documents this crazy time we’re living in, but we’re going through it together.”
Residents from South Orange, Maplewood and surrounding towns can submit photos they’ve taken of what they’re doing while staying home. The website that Moss and Delett set up for the project, www.i19gallery.com, shows people baking, coloring their driveways with chalk, looking at newly blossomed flowers and having socially distant gatherings.
“It’s an easy ask, because everyone has the ability to take pictures,” Moss said in a phone interview on April 10.
To be featured in the digital gallery, area residents can email photos to [email protected] with the name of the person who took the picture and a caption. Delett and Moss are combing through the emails and feeding them into the project.
“It’s telling its own story,” Delett said. “We’re getting photos of people on walks outside and kids who are distance learning. They’re showing what they’re doing to connect with each other and keep their sanity.”
The Good Crowd Events team, who met while working at Valley Arts in Orange, had just created an installation at TEDxMaplewood in February, and the seeds of the photo project were planted in that project as well as in Inktober, a project that the 1978 Gallery in Maplewood hosted and that Moss and Delett worked on. Similar to the current photo collaboration, for that project residents in Maplewood were able to draw on the walls of the gallery while following a prompt.
“I think everyone feeling like they’re in the same boat makes it better,” Moss said about the quarantine. “We want it to be a project of the people.”
Most photos that have been submitted have come from South Orange and Maplewood, but not all. Moss said some have come from Brooklyn and others have come from other countries, taken by people who used to live in Maplewood but have since moved. The project is open to anyone to participate.
Aside from the baking and walking photos, a subject that’s shown up in the gallery is empty locations.
“Another theme is deserted places, which is telling,” Moss said. “One person works in New York and sent a photo of an empty avenue.”
When the pandemic is over and the lockdown is lifted, he and Delett are hoping to build an installation exhibit out of the photos, where residents can come together and see what they were doing while they had to stay apart.
“We’ve gotten feedback from people that it’s making them feel more connected,” Delett said.
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