These images were made while visiting a close friend and her family in Goulds, Florida, during the first, and arguably last, quarantined summer of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although much of the country remained defined by isolation and uncertainty, everyday life persisted in Cutler Manor.

Very little within the frame of these images explicitly identifies them as photographs made during a global health pandemic. There are no masks, distancing markers, or visual cues commonly associated with 2020. Instead, the photographs depict neighbors and friends talking, families gathering and people occupying public space. As I have revisited the work over time, I have become less interested in the photographs as records of the pandemic itself and more interested in the questions they raise about community and survival. What does care look like when institutional systems feel distant or insufficient? How do communities sustain themselves when everyday survival depends upon relationships of mutual support?

In many working-class communities, childcare, food, emotional support, transportation, economic resources are shared and circulated through extended networks of family, neighbors, and friends. Separation from these networks can carry consequences beyond loneliness. These photographs document a moment when those networks remained active despite the uncertainty surrounding them.

Created on Juneteenth 2020, the project unintentionally captures two overlapping histories: a period of national isolation against a longstanding tradition of communal Black life.