Photographer Kendall Waldman is selling a small book of images of life in American pandemia and giving all proceeds to The Modest Needs Foundation. This is, of course, a ubiquitous model in this strange time of ours, when any artist with a functioning combination of heart and brain is trying to reconcile the impulse to work and the impulse to help. If you have the means, I encourage you to buy every item that every artist on the whole of the internet is selling to raise money for a good cause. But, if you must be discerning, if you’d like to contribute to an organization that seems to truly understand this unique societal moment and own an art object that does too, I recommend Waldman’s project.
Simply put, these photographs capture the popular experience of life under COVID-19 lockdown so accurately and efficiently, it hurts a little. I don’t mean that the book offers a representative variety of stories—this isn’t reportage—but that it quietly articulates exactly what these months have felt like. It’s a formal study of an informal tone. Flipping through its pages some years from now just might be the easiest way to access the 2020 sense memories we’ll surely be storing in our marrow for decades to come. text by Gideon Jacobs
Follow Kendall Waldman on Instagram, and DM to buy the book.