COVID Dairy
by Beth Galton
Photography book and visual diary, COVID Diary by Beth Galton documents the photographer’s experience, anxiety, and art during the lockdown in New York City in 2020/2021.
“Like everyone, I struggled with the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic – how it spread and wreaked havoc around the globe. In March of 2020, my world in NYC became my apartment. I brought a camera and some stands home from my photo studio, and constructed a small set next to a window.” So begins the story of COVID Diary, one tale in the connected, isolated, unique, common and interwoven tales we all have to tell about the year that the pandemic stopped us in our tracks.
Artist Biography
A born and bred New Yorker, Beth Galton is continually inspired by the sights, sounds, and tastes of the city she calls home. The path to a prolific career as an award-winning New York City photographer began in a childhood animated with Marvel Comics, choral music, a natural science education, flute lessons, and the chaotic and composed meals she had at home and abroad. Photography became her method to synthesize life.
Drawn to the organic classicism of Edward Weston, Ansel Adams and Edward Steichen, Beth’s work is informed by her sensitivity to how light falls and shapes the subject. Her work is exceptional in its ability to invest her images with emotion. Whether making a photo look so compelling you want to pick it up off the page, or conceptually exploring an idea, she applies her deep knowledge and love of craft to each photograph she creates.
Beth’s personal warmth and generosity infuse her working and shooting environment. She enjoys creative and collaborative relationships with stylists and Art Directors many of whom she works with again and again. Her images and short films tell stories – the story of memories, of what and how we eat together, a love of nature, and the pleasure of shared experiences.
COVID Diary by Beth Galton
COVID Diary by Beth Galton
COVID Diary is one photographer’s tale of processing the COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of her camera. This unique book, one part diary and one part art exhibit allows a glimpse into Beth Galton’s life, thoughts, and art process as New York City weathered the storm of the global pandemic.
While the news was everywhere and overwhelming at times, Beth found both comfort and heartbreak in it. Walking away from her well-honed skills as a commercial photographer, she began a process of creating images that would speak to her anxiety, to the uncertainty of the time, and to the trajectory of how this crisis was handled. Compelled to find the humanity in the myriad charts and graphs that reported cases, deaths, and recoveries, Beth reached for symbols of life to balance the data. Botanical matter is scattered through the photographs, metaphorically and hopefully interwoven with jarring data, and ephemera from this period.