Isolation
- Isolation
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Sim Gill, isolation, 2021. Photograph.
This photograph captures Kensington Park Gardens, London, during the third national lockdown in the United Kingdom. On March 23, 2020, the U.K.'s prime minister issued a stark directive: "You must stay at home." Within a mere twenty-four hours, our daily routines and rituals were cast into uncertainty, our usual distractions temporarily vanished, leaving us with existential queries about what lay ahead, the duration of this new reality, and when normalcy might return. For numerous individuals, this marked their first encounter with a paradigm-shifting global event, encompassing remote work and social distancing, as well as upending familiar habitual practices. On reflection, it is important that our narratives surrounding this period respect and reflect a framework that honestly captures the incompleteness and tensions of this unprecedented moment. [End Page 347]
Sim Gill is a doctoral student at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests concern the mediation of violence against women and girls as well as the negotiations between discourses of representation, affect, and subjectivity that speaks to a broader shaping of a market for women's safety. Before joining Annenberg, Gill worked in the British Civil Service graduate program known as the Fast Stream. She received her BA in politics, philosophy, and economics from the University of Warwick and her MSc at the London School of Economics, where she specialized in media, communications, and development. She can be reached at simron.gill@asc.upenn.edu.
