A 28 Year old photography student, Jonny Cartwright from Dumfries has created a short film as his moving image project submission for uni this year. Based on the comparison between the Second World War and the current Covid-19 pandemic, the video will only be able to be viewed until May the 9th.
In a recent interview Jonny told DGWGO “I’m a 28 year old photographer currently finishing my 2nd year studying for a photography degree at The University of Cumbria. I live with my partner and 1 year old son in Dumfries, and we moved here from Edinburgh in 2017 so I could study photography at Dumfries college but realised afterwards that we didn’t want to leave!
Like many students, I found my plans for university projects disrupted by the coronavirus outbreak, and after the initial panic of wondering how to continue with what I’d started I decided to change course completely and build my portfolio around what was going on instead. This semester we were required to make a 3 minute documentary, and this is actually the first time I have fully directed and edited my own film so it was quite a learning curve.
The idea originally came off the back of a conversation that my partner had with her grandmother, Raymonde, when the social distancing measures were beginning and some people started saying this was ‘our generation’s world war two,’ or words to that effect. Raymonde lived and worked in Coventry during the war, and was pretty shocked at the comparison because at the time people were panic buying and hoarding and wasting fresh food, she couldn’t see any of the support and banding together that the war had brought about in communities. However by the time I recorded her thoughts about this and her experience of lockdown, some good news had started to emerge, with people running errands for their neighbours and checking up on each other. Her faith in people had been restored, if not the government!”
I shot this short film as my moving image project submission for uni this year. Based on the comparison between the Second World War and the current Covid-19 situation that has been circulating, I got the opinion of my partners 94 year year old grandmother, who lived in Coventry during the blitz. Currently live at https://jonnycartwright.wixsite.com/exhibition/we-had-a-government. This webpage will only be up for the next 10 days until the 9th of may. This is my Uni end of year exhibition, But for obvious reasons was changed to digital format. This video was shot in Dumfries over the last few weeks and in accordance to social distancing measures.
Publiée par Jonny Cartwright Photography sur Mercredi 29 avril 2020
Jonny continues “It was tricky choosing just a few clips to use, but after editing the voiceover together with the music, I set out to capture the mood of the current lockdown as best I could with my camera. I wanted to show that even though we are all on lockdown, the world is still moving around us. Pairing the signs and effects of restrictions with nature shots seemed the logical way for me to do this – on one side we have the narrative that everything is put on hold, and the other is just the everyday scenes of Spring life and the natural world continuing and moving forwards regardless. At the same time, everyday tasks like doing the laundry are so normal they are almost jarring.
Along with so many others I have struggled emotionally with the effects of social distancing, so being able to focus my thoughts on the situation in this way has been quite cathartic.”
