Let Shadows Fall Behind Us is a collection of work by Six Feet Photography Project's Parenthood Practice Group. Established in April 2020, this group has been meeting fortnightly to share with each other the creative ways they have responded to the pandemic as both photographers and parents or caregivers. The group's members span multiple countries and time zones, and have been nourished by their many commonalities of experience.

In the beginning of things, the terrifying, paralysing part was the overwhelming unknown.

We held each other tight, too tight perhaps. At times it was suffocating, unrelenting. Airless. Stagnant.

Stay inside. Work from home. No contact. Job gone. Home school.
Adjust, adrift.

We ran to the wild, to the sea, whenever we could.
Just an hour outside the walls, we absorbed it, that pandemic balm.

Things unravelled further, close and far.
Big giant cracks with no clear navigation.

Trying to keep it going and keep it light on the darkest of days, days where you despair for the people, the earth and your loved ones all at once.

She snaps you back to the very moment, again and again.
With story, by clasping your hand, with a laugh and a muddled pop song.

The reset was fraught but there’s a new clarity forming in the fog of it all.

I have high hopes.

Nicole Marie

The time we spent in quarantine left many of us feeling unsettled and without our sense of security. I was fortunate to be able to spend 6 months quarantining with my granddaughter - she portrays my own worry and lack of knowing when things will be normal again. The long days of summer provided us with many opportunities to forget about the outside world and the virus. We never felt isolated because we were together.

Leslie Granda-Hill

I felt like I was on a rollercoaster of feeling: fear of the unknown, sadness for humanity's suffering, and guilty for enjoying precious moments of happiness with my family. I found peace working in my garden and observing nature while experiencing the whirlwind of emotions passing through my body and heart.

I realized it was time to let go of parts of my life and old habits that were no longer needed, to open a new space inside me to nurture something new. It was time to slow down, to reconnect with people and values that I really care about, and, most of all, to create a new lifestyle for my family.

Sandra Bacchi

It was going to be challenging anyway, having a baby with two others at home under five years old. The needs of all three would’ve absorbed me, anyway, like a pool of blue liquid on a paper towel. But it’s been different, and much harder, under the intensity of Melbourne’s rolling lockdown periods. Every new restriction throwing shapes at me; I dip and duck; on good days pull a few moves of my own. From some angles, it’s parenting as usual (but only if you squint). Wide eyed, I see that the pandemic’s shaded everything. One child at times afraid to go outside, the other’s days and nights disrupted by imagined invisible menaces. The adults, meanwhile, process their own anxiousness in scraps of sleep and exhausted waking hours. Remembering to turn our social bodies as often as we can, to avoid pressure sores. Remembering to walk somewhere each day.

The photos I take and hold are stones of small moments, some of pure, most of mixed emotions.

This. And this. And this.

Marissa Johnpillai

In the midst of such upheaval and unsettling feelings of groundlessness, maybe the best we can do is pay attention. For me, the camera is a magical wand of attention. It grants me needed doses of focus and perspective. It helps me stay attuned to finding moments of joy.

Well before the pandemic, I felt that living as isolated nuclear families was unhealthy. Now, we are just at a whole new level of unhealthy. Raising children alone, is quite simply put, LONELY.

We are all in need of magic wands.

Eliza Bell

Inwards, happy, anxious, watching them grow in first row.
Colorful, noisy, nostalgic, watching me fail, watching me getting it right too. Letting them see me cry, hugs, yells, tons of sugar.
Learning, learning, learning.

Karla Sotelo

Learning to parent
adapt, let go, keep going
You will get through this
Living through the pandemic as a new parent is a heavy weight to bear.
Waking daily to nurture and protect
Seeking hope in her smile
Her laugh
Such joy and heartbreak
Some days we create a world without ever leaving the yard.

Brit Davis Klepac

Some days, I am grateful for social distancing. Life has gotten really simple. We wake, we nurse, we nap, we repeat. We squeeze in chores, chats, internet browsing, TV on the cellphone. There’s no pressure to go anywhere, and this allows us to follow physiologic rhythms in a way I imagine few modern mother/baby dyads do these days. Some other days, though, I feel under stimulated. We play on the inside play mat, then the outside, then bounce around the backyard, the crib, the basement. And thoughts move to the future. When will you meet your sweet grandparents in person? When will aunties get to bounce you? Will you even realize that other people exist? And those thoughts can turn dangerously to guilt. This is not the world I thought I was giving to you.

Denise Rubinfeld

Levels of intensity and challenge opened up for our family during this time. It's as though the floor gave way and I dropped into a vast, turbulent ocean. We've built our boat, improving it along the way, sailing towards hope.

Jocelyn Mathewes

Let Shadows Fall Behind Us: Parenting in the pandemic