Ying Ang: Covid-diaries from Melbourne, Australia
March 26, 2020
I go outside and breathe in deep. Feel my chest expand outwards and chant to my young son, “in through the nose and out through the mouth”. We do Lion’s Breath through the park and run between the trees. There seem to be more birds than usual. The grass seems higher, wilder. A miasma of worry cloaks these walks and I wonder if it’s just a matter of time before I lose someone I love. As my son sleeps in his room tonight, I will imagine his little, robust lungs, pink, clear and healthy. I think of my father walking through another park in another part of town. I miss squeezing him tight. I wonder if my friends are ok, circling their homes, hunkered down in front of the news, working out recipes that involve a couple of rationed cans of beans.
March 27, 2020
Saw a video the other day. A friend in her backyard had filmed two of her kids giving each other piggyback rides. Both similar in size, they strained against each other’s weight, collapsing in giggles, dusting each other off only to attempt the herculean feat again. I thought of how I had planned to perhaps have another child this year... how much I wanted to witness my son pit his wit, love and competition against a peer, a ride-or-die, a brother/sister. I wondered what it would feel like to live a quarter of your life at home, with only your parents for company - giants that barely comprehend your language. I think fearfully of maternity wards full of COVID patients and no room for a high risk pregnancy.
March 29, 2020
Articles keep appearing in my inbox about COVID-19 patients dying alone. The horror of it steals my breath away. That my parents, my child, my husband or myself could be lying in a hospital bed, suffocating to death with no one around to lend a hand to hold. Drowning. These thoughts are dark and punctuate, like a hammer and nail, the endless memes and political satires in the digital onslaught of the corona genre. So dark that I don’t know what to do with them. Do I lean in? And if so, will I crumble from the weight of it? Do I numb myself in a monsoon of crappy television? And if so, will I be caught completely unawares when it happens and regret forever not finding a way to say goodbye? Aside from trying to work out how far to take my germophobia, this is the most taxing and confusing issue at hand. In a time of incalculable tragedy, where is the line of reason?
April 4, 2020
Some moments working from home are luminous. I forgot that it could be like this with a child. Half minutes that slow down to undefinable stretches of time. Rain rolling in, windows open to the cool fall air, huddled deep into duvets and a child captivated by his breath trapped in iridescent bubbles floating through the sky.
April 5, 2020
It is a question of trust and the body. I cannot trust you, because I don’t know what you’ve touched or where you’ve been or who you crossed paths with at the grocery store. I cannot trust myself, for my hands may have unwittingly betrayed me... brushed up against a bench, a railing, too soon after exposure from a COVID carrier. This isolation of psyche lies heavier than the physical distance. The gulf yawns open between us and we wave from the precipice.
April 6, 2020
Marriage in quarantine. Desert island vibes. Just you and me, baby. Well, and our baby. Well, toddler. News droning in the background, sometimes soul. Fridge full of homemade food for the first time in my adult life. Pasta for days. I cut our hair, our nails. You plant more herbs. I work, you play hide-and-seek. You work, I read Miffy and Dr Seuss. I cry, you worry. We both stay up too late. Did I ever look at you and think, here’s a man that I would spend weeks, perhaps months, in captivity with? Probably not. Yet here we are. Taking solace in each other’s warmth as the nights grow long and cold and by the same turn, treading on nerves rubbed raw.
April 7, 2020
Has there ever been anything sweeter than the life of a child pushed up against the knife edge of mortality? I hear his voice now and it sounds like bells. The velvet skin of his cheek, a perfect peach. I am content working as he tugs at my sleeve. Today, I cried because I missed my dad. My son came to me and laid his head on my chest. At dinner, he asked me if I was better. I shared an apple with him. Time compresses, stretches out, atomized with the endless sameness of our daily routine. Our centre of orbit - home, the park across the road, home again. Walked through the rain this morning. Watched lichen and mushrooms glisten in the wet. These are the markers of the day.
April 9, 2020
Body weight and haptic pleasures. I did yoga today and at the end of it, lay on my back in corpse pose. The entire length of my body resting on the earth, my chest sinking into my back, sinking into the ground. It brought me to an older place, when I was younger, more vulnerable, and held in a circle of safety by my parents. Then I remembered that touch was unsanctioned now. What will be the cost of the absence of embrace for months at a time for those who live alone? If not a body, what about a palm? A cheek? And for the elderly amongst us, the loss of their grandchildren and the reciprocal reassurance of little arms around bowed necks?
April 11, 2020
I’ve never been so mindful about my breath before. We’ve been looking at masks, reading about makeshift materials, what works and what doesn’t work. I put one on my son now when we get into the elevator. Someone stood at the entrance and coughed on us the other day, without covering his mouth as the doors opened. No where to turn and I could do nothing but stare in horror and step around him out to the foyer, mind spinning with the image of uncountable microscopic particles entering our bodies and the sound of rolling die. So now we wear masks whenever we have to leave our building. Inhaling the hot air of our own breaths, rapid-fire heartbeats as I carry my son so that he doesn’t press buttons and heft groceries at the same time. We walk in the door and I drop everything to scrub our hands, gulping down big lungfuls of unfiltered air. Grateful.
April 12, 2020
The crest of my optimism (I know, right), is starting to subside. Reading the news isn’t helping. My only saving grace right now is the drive of motherhood - the unrelenting nature of wake, dress, feed, nap, play, feed, bathe, sleep. We started building cubby houses yesterday. Small, make-believe spaces within our every day, where I knock to be invited in and am offered a cup of coffee and some butter on toast. Old spaces are made new again and we move between them, rowing boats across the rug, sometimes falling and having to swim to the next destination. Our imaginary places feel profoundly nostalgic. Oh look, here’s the playground. Let’s go down the slide. Meet you at the bottom.
April 13, 2020 I sit a distance from my parents as we surreptitiously meet at the park for some “exercise”. It is only my son that is really exerting much energy, hiding behind trees, counting down from ten as he peers through his splayed fingers. We sit several meters away from each other, not talking much, pretending that we are not together for the most part but taking comfort in the sight of each other.
Based between Melbourne, Singapore and New York, Ying Ang has exhibited widely in group and solo shows internationally, and has been published in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time, Vice and The Fader magazine. She graduated as valedictorian in the 2009-2010 class of Documentary Photography and Photojournalism at The International Centre of Photography, with a subsequent award and portfolio acquisition for the permanent collection of the Sagamihara City Museum in Japan.
Ying has lived and worked extensively in Asia, Australia and North America, having pursued post-graduate studies in Political Science with a background in Biotechnology and Communications. Her first artist book, Gold Coast, won the New York Photo Festival and Encontros Da Imagem book prize for 2014, was a finalist for Australian Photobook of the Year, the CREATE Award, the Guernsey Photography Festival Prize for 2015 and acquired for the Rare Books Collection at the Victorian State Library. Gold Coast was also listed by Flak Photo, Lensculture, Voices of Photography, Mark Power / Magnum Photos, Asia Pacific Photobook Archive and Self Publish Be Happy in their top photobooks of 2014 and honoured with a nomination for the prestigious Prix Pictet award. Ying also fulfilled the role of curator for the Obscura Festival of Photography in Malaysia in 2016 and was the keynote speaker at the inaugural Photobook New Zealand.
Her latest work, Bower Bird Blues, was a Vevey Images Grand Prix finalist in Switzerland, honorably mentioned in the Julia Margaret Cameron Award, shortlisted for the PHOTO2020 International Photobook Prize and exhibited in a solo show during Rencontres d’Arles in France in 2019. Bower Bird Blues is currently being produced as a book with renowned book designer, Teun van der Heijden.
Ying was most recently featured in "FIRECRACKERS: Female Photographers Now", a showcase of contemporary female documentary photographers published by Thames & Hudson, and "How We See: Photobooks By Women", featuring one hundred 21st-century photobooks by women photographers published by 10x10 Photobooks. Ying is currently teaching at the ICP in New York and is the Director of the Reflexions Masterclass in Europe and Le Space Gallery in Melbourne, Australia.
Below is a selection from Ying’s first book, Gold Coast. Find out more about this body of work and others on her site.
