Neil Kramer

I'm currently living through the coronavirus isolation in Queens, New York City, the worst hit location in the United States.  There are constant sirens screaming outside, and there was a death in my apartment building.  To make this experience even more weird, due to a complicated series of events, I am also living this lockdown with my eighty-six year old mother and my ex-wife, Sophia.  It's a bit like a psychology experiment in family relations.  Since my mother's age makes her a risk, we have hardly left the apartment in a month, not wanting to get my mother sick.  The small New York apartment only has two bedrooms and one bathroom, so there is little privacy.  Like many other photographers, we do what we do naturally, and that is to take photos.  While many of my photos are documentary in style, the ones that express the most realism of the situation are ironically, staged.  Sometimes humor is the only way to stay sane.