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SVA faculty member Accra Shepp (MFA Fine Arts, BFA Photography and Video) lives in Jackson Heights, Queens, an area which, along with adjoining neighborhoods like Corona and Elmhurst, has been strongly impacted by COVID-19. As reported by The New York Times, the city-run Elmhurst Hospital Center was one of the earliest and hardest-hit by the virus.

Several weeks ago, Shepp, known for his photographs of Occupy Wall Street, started documenting the crisis by photographing nurses, doctors, EMTs, and firefighters on duty, using a medium format Rolleiflex to make the striking black-and white-images. Right now, the project lives on Instagram, making the faces and names of first responders and medical professionals at Elmhurst Hospital visible to a broader audience. "That's what I was hoping to do, in part," he says. "Let people know that there are real human beings working there."

The portraits convey an honesty and immediacy appropriate to the urgency of the situation, and a level of personality often missing from news coverage and statistics. Ultimately they speak for themselves, but we had the chance to ask Shepp a little more about the process.

What made you want to get out there right now, particularly to Elmhurst? What did you want to capture? 

Like every artist I know, as the pandemic swallowed up New York, I was thinking about how I might respond. There is an implicit responsibility artists have to bear witness. As a visual artist, I explore cultural moments I find resonant and make them visible. This moment is not just resonant; it's shaking the house down.

It occurred to me that I live just a few blocks from Elmhurst Hospital, the first hospital in the City to be overwhelmed by the emergency. It seemed wrong not to record photographically what I could see. So I thought I would keep a visual diary of this neighborhood, of this time. I call it the COVID Journal.

How do you approach people when you want to photograph them?

My focus centers on Elmhurst Hospital and radiates out to include the rest of the neighborhood. I don't want to defy the shelter-in-place order, so I don't range terribly far, just a radius of a few blocks. When I see someone I'd like to photograph, I ask them permission. Most everyone has said yes and I have been very grateful.

Is there a particularly memorable response you could share, or an interaction that stuck with you? 

As I'm sure many are curious, the feeling that I get from the healthcare workers when I approach them is one of exhaustion. They have been working incredibly long hours under the most grueling and dangerous conditions. I photographed a nurse named Angel while he was taking a break after a 14-hour shift. His day wasn't done; he was only taking a break.

For more on Shepp's COVID Journal project, make sure to follow his Instagram account.