My name is Adama Bamba and I am 18 years old and a freshman at MSU Denver. The pandemic has humbled me and made me feel grateful and more thoughtful of who I am and what I want to do with my life.  Right now, the most important things I miss are my friends and my full-family/communities and my freedom of willful/spontaneous choice. This project is just a journey of the feelings I’ve felt during this time of social distancing, spending time with my family and fighting boredom through photography.

Photo 01: This is a photo of my beautiful little sister sitting inside one of the car tires in my backyard. Because of the quarantine we’ve been stuck at home with near nothing to do and I’ve really wanted to show my sister that being on her tablet inside or in front of the TV aren’t the only places she can have fun. I hate that I sound like some aged old man because I don’t even remember or really know what to do outside for fun, but I knew our routines were out of whack and I missed the sun. Eventually we started coming outside to just sit on our phones and started messing around with all the junk we had sitting around our backyard, distancing together. 

To me it represents the rediscovery of backyard fun, pastimes of quarantine, social class, the feeling of being trapped in something, culture even. I chose to take this photo and add word isolation to it to express how my siblings and I feel, kind out of our element of everyday life and trapped or stuck in our home. It also reminded me of people in their own bubbles at a distance from others, kinda like those 6 feet apart policies we have at many public places now. The look on her face also feels like someone stuck at home skeptical of others and the unknowns of the outside world.

Photo 2: This is a photo of the beautiful ball of sunshine that is my baby sister Grace, hanging onto my leg and looking up at me, not asking for anything just happy to be and to have us all at home with her.  To me it represents, well exactly what it says, HOPE, one big reason to keep going and to stay safe is for the protection and preservation of those who are too young to do so for themselves, to protect their change for a bright, joyful and impactful future. This photo also reminds me that happiness is still possible amidst all of this and still will be in the future because life goes on and it is up to us to decide how we spend that time feeling. I hope when people see this they too can think about those things, people and places in their life that bring them joy and remind them to hope on.

Photos 3: This is a photo of the backup mask my mom has hung up in her van because she works at the airport and just in case she forgets to take a mask with her she has a spare. To me it represents a lot of different emotions. I get hit with a wave of that over smothering protection my mom has, although I know she means well. It represents the chaos of the world right now, a pressuring sense of the unknown and uncontrollable that is honestly fighting. But also I’m filled with a feeling of hope, that there really is a light at the end of this dark unpredictable tunnel we are in and it will come some day and so we just need to fasten our mask and just keep on keeping on. I chose to take this photo and add the words “Too much, Overload, Protection” to it to express the immense, overwhelming, and bittersweet representation that a face mask can hold during this time. For many it is something they long for but cannot find, some feel a sense of safety and defense for others it is a reminder of fear, paranoia and anxiety. I just wanted to express the complex feelings I felt deep down with this photo and text.

My hope for the future is to appreciate the time I’ve got and the people that make up my world. Because, the one thing I’ve learned is that you only recognize the good times as the good times after you’re already out of them. I also really can’t wait to be able to go outside and paint with a good friend of mine.