A Photo Exhibit By New York Catholics Honors Heroes Of The COVID-19 Pandemic
In a photo displayed at “Portraits of Grace,” a nurse at Lennox Hill Hospital in Manhattan brings hope and encouragement to a patient suffering with complications due to COVID-19. Photo by Lee Weisman for Northwell Health.
NEW YORK — The tragedy of the COVID-19 pandemic has been so many things in it’s nearly two-year lifespan: divisive, disruptive and deadly; world-altering, thought-provoking and desperation-inducing. We’ve all experienced it differently, though we’ve shared the burden of loss, change and fear. Sometimes it’s hard to fathom the scale of what’s happened. In March 2020, the entire world shut down — practically overnight. A deadly disease was starting to kill people in record numbers and we didn’t know just how bad it was going to get.
The Sheen Center for Thought and Culture’s new photo series called “Portraits of Grace: Honoring Heroes of the COVID-19 Pandemic” offers a space for New Yorkers and Christians to reflect on the pandemic with an eye toward the hopeful. Located adjacent to the Sheen Center’s NOHO performance space, the exhibit highlights the service and experience of Roman Catholic New Yorkers during some of the pandemic’s darkest hours.
According to the exhibit guide — distributed via a QR code when you arrive — the photo gallery is the first phase of a multimedia series that will tell the stories of health care workers, clergy and parishioners through videos, testimonials and hybrid live events.
A team member at the Sheen Center prepares the “Portraits of Grace” photo exhibit. Photo by Jeffrey Bruno.
The gallery is in a small, well-lit room at the corner of the Sheen building. As the city progresses further into fall, the tree-lined streets visible from the windows are bound to elevate the beauty of the space. Photos hang on three walls — windows interspersed — and a fourth wall holds a series of smaller images as well as the doorways to enter and exit.
Light Amid The Dark
Members of the Sisters of Life enter Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Lower Manhattan for Benediction on Oct. 3, 2020. Photo by Jeffrey Bruno.
I am not Catholic, but though I’m not acquainted with that particular church tradition, many of these images struck me as familiar. One is a woman sitting completely alone in a church, praying while masked in pews sectioned off by blue painter’s tape. I know that story. I recognize the emptiness of rooms like that, which are meant to be full of worship but instead are completely silent. I remember that face masks and tape barricades would have once been a strange sight in a place like that.
There’s another photo, a framed portrait of a priest flanked by candles and flowers in the sanctuary of a church. There’s no caption for the image, but we know that story anyway — he passed away far too early because of COVID-19.
But while “Portraits of Grace” can be a reminder of what we’ve lost, many of the photos in the exhibit are solemnly hopeful. A baby — named after St. Rocco, who is believed to be a protector against plagues and contagious diseases in Catholicism — is baptized in his father’s arms five months after his birth.
Many of the photos are in hospitals — health care workers comforting patients, receiving blessings or praying. In these photos, it’s all about the eyes. Nurses and doctors clad in the standard uniforms of their profession, plus the added protection of a mask, leaves little to the viewer except their eyes.
In one photo, a man in a wheelchair is being discharged after a stint in the ICU. Surrounded by health care workers, the crowd is jubilant. One woman’s nose crinkles with a smile, and a man glances into the camera looking relieved. The man in the wheelchair is simply overwhelmed. As he’s embraced by a loved one, he’s beginning to break down. It’s likely he didn’t expect he’d be holding a handmade sign that said “Happy Discharge Day.” In other images, the eyes are tired, stoic and sometimes hopeful.
When we think of the phrase “images of the pandemic,” we’re bound to see different things in our mind’s eye. Frontline workers in New York City will have a vastly different set of images than an office worker who experienced most of the pandemic through a television or a Twitter feed. Our proximity to tragedies, too, will change how we remember those earliest days of uncertainty and fear.
“Portraits of Grace” caused me to think about the grimness in those hospitals that was sometimes just out of frame. It caused me to think about those images of refrigerated trucks parked in empty lots. It caused me to think about my wife, who is currently in her final year of nursing school, and how different the field of health care will be once she graduates. I think of her future colleagues here in New York, and I mourn for the trauma that they’ve seen — some of them so early in their lives.
For the first time in a while, I actually thought about what has happened since March 2020. And the scale of it all overwhelmed me. I sat there in that quiet room and prayed for the families who lost someone to COVID-19. I prayed for those health care workers and all that they continue to endure. Since March 2020, I have lost both my grandfathers, and I lost time with both of them as their lives approached the end. I sat there for a moment and mourned.
Some segments of the outermost wall in the gallery extend by about a foot, creating additional faces on either side. There is a quote by the New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan painted on those faces: “No matter how dark some days seemed, we remained united in our unwavering faith in God, knowing that He would bring light out of the darkness, hope from despair, life from death.”
In an image titled “Leading the Charge,” Dolan is pictured leading a group of people down a street during an effort to distribute Thanksgiving food to the needy at a community center in Harlem.
Our Lady In Harlem
A statue of Mary is lifted above the crowd of about 750 people celebrating the Feast of the Assumption in a procession on the streets of Harlem on Aug. 16, 2020. Photo by Jeffrey Bruno for Catholic New York.
The presentation of the gallery is critical to its effectiveness. It’s not a dark, sober room — it’s full of light. It’s understated, but clear in its tone. If you catch it on a quiet, clear day like I did, it’s a worthy space for reflection on the tragedy we continue to endure and a reminder of the goodness in our world that perseveres.
It’s also a lesson to those of us who may have been too caught up in ourselves during the pandemic to look beyond our narrow experience — to remember that so many people lost their lives, and many who did not have been permanently changed due to the events of these last two years.
The Sheen Center’s “Portraits of Grace” is on display until Oct. 4, 2021. It is open to the public Tuesday-Sunday.
Graham McNally has written for Newsweek and The Empire State Tribune. He graduated from The King’s College in NYC in 2021 with a degree in Media, Culture and the Arts.