The pandemic sits like a cairn marking a trail through our collective memory. The outward aspects of this marker are not momentous, just a haphazard pile of discarded worries and fears, concern about
cloth masks versus paper masks, dim recollections of isolation and ambulance sirens, the smell of hand sanitizer. It does, however, mark a threshold in contemporary history where we collectively faced our responsibility to each other – to reflect upon the idea long denied by social norms that our own personal welfare is connected to the welfare of not only our neighbors but also those we hardly know and especially those we try to not to know.

This connectedness came into startlingly sharp focus in the aftermath of three murders, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery. The video documentation of George Floyd’s last moments in particular caused a spasm that was felt globally. It was a spasm of our collective humanity watching one person undo another without justification without remorse.

Shepp’s images of this spasm in New York City form the “Justice” chapter of his multi-part project, “The Covid Journals.” It was the pandemic that provided the context for our ability to perceive something we had long tried not to. In our isolation, no one could escape the obvious and shameful brutality encapsulated in the act. It laid bare the history of old and senseless racial hatreds, but in a truly remarkable turn of events everyone united to reject it. Shepp’s images reflect the first few months of this historic response.