Islands by Tyler Simnick

Islands (italics) is a visual narrative of documentary and street photographs taken on 35mm film from 2020 – 2022 during the COVID 19 pandemic in New York City. Covering elements of material and social culture, from lines and signs to masks and protests, Islands (ital) memorializes and investigates this historic and uniquely strange era in the city. Five years later and in the midst of the Trump regime’s attempts to erase and dismantle the gains made by the various protest movements of the period, it seems more important than ever to share documentary images of that time as it rapidly recedes into the vanishing point of public memory. The title refers both to the literal sense of the word with New York City being comprised of islands, but also metaphorically to isolation and the difficulties of traversing space and distance.