Memorial Hill 2020

Portraits of a college community in the global pandemic

PART I: Students, Faculty and Staff

Part II：Essential Staff （Click Here)

part III: Families (Click here)

PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS (CLIKE HERE)

Work in progress

WE will Keep Updating this Website with new photos

Photos shown here are First Edits

Facing the iconic Holyoke Range, Memorial Hill rests quietly on the south side of the Amherst College campus. Dedicated in 1946 in commemoration of alumni veterans of the two world wars, it monumentalizes the most disruptive times in the history of the college and the twentieth-century world. During both wars, Amherst adapted its educational facilities to accommodate military training programs as many students and alumni headed off to the battlefields. Lives were lost; the course of human history was forever altered. 

In the spring of 2020, we revisit Memorial Hill in another tumultuous time. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has deeply unsettled the world. Like most colleges and universities in the world, Amherst closed its campus in order to prevent the virus from spreading in its close-knit residential community. Classes went remote; students returned home. In many parts of the globe, this pandemic constitutes the greatest crisis since the end of World War II. For Amherst, it is the third time in almost 200 years that she entered a period of serious disruption and profound uncertainty. 

The history of the pandemic is still unfolding. At this juncture, we, George Qiao (Assistant Professor of History and Asian Languages and Civilizations), Haoran Tong (Class of 2023), and Kalea Ramsey (Class of 2023) felt earnestly compelled to make a photographic record of our college community in the face of the crisis. During the lockdown, at a time of intense anxiety, we invited community members to come to campus and sit for us in individual and group portraits on top of the Memorial Hill, with the Holyoke Range as the backdrop. We also asked the participants to jot down their personal experiences of the pandemic on an online questionnaire. 

Our community members responded with great enthusiasm. It was their participation and support that made the project possible, enjoyable, and worthwhile. Within the past two months, we have photographed close to 300 people, including students who chose to remain on campus, alumni who live nearby, faculty from a number of academic departments, the college administration from the president to staff members of different offices, campus police, health center staff, and workers from dining, custodial, facilities, and print and mail services. Many brought their families. Our youngest participant is 4-month-old, while the oldest graduated from the College in 1951. The project also most vividly showcases the diversity and inclusiveness that has become the hallmark of the Amherst community and embodies the globalized world: our participants came from over 25 countries, represented many states within the US, and encompassd a broad spectrum of racial and gender identities. During the photo sessions, we observed that so many participants were excited to have the rare opportunity to get back on campus; our photoshoot actually demonstrates how we can still socialize with other people in safe and meaningful ways. We came to learn how strongly participants value their connections to their community, and how keenly they crave to get reconnected with it. Humans long to be in communities; physical dispersion only strengthens a spiritual bond.

Our photographing process strictly obeys social distancing rules, which shapes the aesthetics of the photographs. Environmental portraits, shot from a long distance, juxtapose the isolated subjects against the majestic landscape. Close-up portraits, shot with a telephoto lens when both the photographer and the subject wearing masks, focus on the covered faces. The masked face best symbolizes the strangeness of human condition in this pandemic: while half of our face is rendered invisible, we still try to establish soulful connections with others through the telling eyes, expressing our fear, hope, anxiety, affection, longing, and defiance. While the virus and the measures to fight it are threatening to undermine what is inherently human about us, we hope that through this project, we might reclaim our humanity and the sense of our agency when facing all the dark forces that are upsetting today’s world. The photographs are of a small community, but we hope the meaning far exceeds it. 

At this point, we are still working on the photoshoot and collecting responses to our questionnaire. We have yet to begin the final editing process. We still do not know what final shape this project will take, but we are constantly updating this website. Eventually we hope to exhibit a selection of the work on campus and in places beyond Amherst, and create a photo book to include portraits of all participants. We also plan to donate a complete copy of the work to the college archives so that this unusual period in history will be remembered.  It is a project for the here and now, and also one for history and for the future.