Torn explores the mental issues arising during the COVID-19 pandemic. The photographer herself was hospitalized with COVID-19, as well as her family members. In her project, she staged situations to create a testament, a collective memory of moments which are often unexplainable, and try to represent psychosomatic experiences.
She says about her experience: “White-dressed health workers looked like aliens from a science-fiction film with no facial expression or emotion. I found chaos in light and order in the dark when my vision was subsequently affected by an eye-inflammatory disease. (....) During my hospital days, I started seeing the anxiety and trauma of ordinary people, but not only because of the disease, also for growing social frictions, fear mongering and inadequate care by the authorities.”
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Salma Abedin Prithi is a Bangladeshi photographer interested in rituals and women’s iconography. A former news reporter and television presenter, she decided to pursue photography and graduated from Pathshala South Asian Media Institute in 2012.
For the first time, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Joop Swart Masterclass took place online over a period of four months, and 24 participants and eight masters were selected to make the program more inclusive. The educational experience of the Joop Swart Masterclass is based on an assignment to produce a photo essay around a given theme. This year the theme was ‘Reset’.
