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Like many others when they realized that the coronavirus pandemic would upend their lives, Heather Perry initially panicked. The Bath-based photographer had nine weeks of photography work scheduled overseas that would surely not happen, along with local assignments that would undoubtedly disappear. And she dreaded the impending isolation from others. “One of the biggest motivations for me as a photographer is to connect with people,” Perry says. “I love to immerse in people’s lives and understand what they do and how they are. I felt the upcoming absence of being able to do that.” So she came up with an idea: she would take portraits of people from at least six feet away while recording an interview with them over their cell phones about how they were dealing with the pandemic. “Once I hatched the idea to do this, I worked almost nonstop for 72 hours,” Perry says. She created a backdrop that she could bring to the subjects’ homes, figured out the logistics of recording audio, and built a website that allowed participants to schedule shoots and sign model releases. Over the next couple of weeks, Perry photographed around 60 subjects for her Six Feet Apart project. “I hope it gave the people I worked with an opportunity to connect at a time when we were uncertain with how we were going to connect, at a time when we were told we were going to isolate,” she says. The project is still ongoing, and Perry plans to talk to people about the long-term economic hardships they’re facing and would like to interview someone who has recovered from COVID-19. “Having this extraordinary moment in time kind of time-stamped with a portrait, I hope we’ve created something that becomes a positive memory in what has been a really challenging time for all of us.”

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