The People We Met In A Year Like No Other
Three months into 2020, the world shut down. A pandemic upended daily life as streets emptied, schools closed and businesses shuttered. Millions lost jobs. Our health care system was tested like never before. And more than 300,000 Americans lost their lives, including over 11,000 here in Massachusetts.
The pandemic also exacerbated existing inequities in our society, as those already struggling battled additional challenges: isolation, a lack of resources, profound levels of stress and deep personal loss. COVID-19 exposed long-standing stresses within and among our communities. We experienced a national racial reckoning in the wake of police killings of Black men and women, a rise in unrest around the country and an ever-deepening political and social divide.
Few events in our lifetimes have had a greater impact on the lives of so many. The 28 portraits featured here offer a window into some of those lives; their stories are both unique and representative of 2020's legacy.
Please have a look, a read and a listen.
- Meredith Nierman, Director of Photography
This year we continue to highlight the need for photographs to be more accessible to those who can’t see. We have partnered with GBH’s National Center for Accessible Media to present you with a more accessible “Year in Portraits.” Each photo below is accompanied by a caption and an audio description. The audio description puts into words key visual elements of each photo for people who are blind or have low vision. A text transcript of each image description is also available for people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
Find more information about descriptive audio and screen readers and see a list of credits.
Jon Santiago, a Massachusetts state representative and ER doctor, stands outside of the emergency room entrance at Boston City Hospital in Boston on April 8, 2020.
On March 15, when Gov. Charlie Baker first closed schools and banned gatherings of 25 or more people, Massachusetts had 164 COVID-19 cases. Three weeks later — when Boston Mayor Marty Walsh told Bostonians to wear masks in public and announced a citywide curfew — the state total was 12,500. And it would only get worse.
"I don’t know how bad it’s going to get, to be honest with you," Santiago said in April, as the city was preparing for its first surge of COVID cases. "But I do know that people will be sick, and they’re going to be looking for some help, and I’m going to be there to provide it."
Read More: Boston Braces For The 'Surge'
Elizabeth Rucker (right) and one of her four roommates stand outside of their apartment in Boston. In April, they were a few days late in paying their rent because the shift to remote work had impacted all of their jobs. During that time they received an unofficial notice of eviction from their landlord, warning them to pay up or prepare to move.
Even though Chief Housing Court Justice Timothy F. Sullivan had suspended most eviction proceedings in the state because of the pandemic, a number of renters were still receiving initial notices like the one Rucker received.
“Many people might think that they had to just leave,” Rucker said. “We happened to be able to pay rent this month, but … we’re concerned for ourselves for future months that we wouldn’t be able to pay.”
Paul Guiney, a senior pitcher at Catholic Memorial High School, poses for a photo outside of his home in Natick, Massachusetts, on April 30, 2020.
The Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association announced on April 24 that there would be no spring sports or tournaments, days after Gov. Charlie Baker announced that Massachusetts schools would be closed for the remainder of the year.
“Graduation, prom, all those ceremonies are nice,” said Guiney. “But baseball was something I’ve really worked for, and it’s been with me my whole life."
Read More: High School Seniors Cope With A Spring Without Sports Because Of Coronavirus
Julianna Perry, a senior at Lynn English High School, poses for a portrait outside of her home in Lynn, Massachusetts, on May 5, 2020.
A Suffolk University/WGBH News/Boston Globe poll released in May found that more than one-third of surveyed parents of school-age children in Massachusetts felt at the time that the remote learning offered by their school district was poor, or not very good.
This came as schools faced significant challenges in educating students during the pandemic, especially in districts with fewer resources.
“We can't really learn something brand new,” Perry said. “So we're really just going over things that we've already learned.”
Read More: Remote Learning Is A Challenge, Especially For Students In Districts With Fewer Resources
Esmeralda (pseudonym), a 24-year-old mother from El Salvador, sits on a stoop in Chelsea, Massachusetts. She contracted the coronavirus in the spring and resisted testing out of fear of endangering herself and her family.
Many immigrants in Chelsea and across the state, both with and without documentation, have not sought medical care or testing for the coronavirus due to deep fear and distrust of government entities.
“There have been many times when I have been scared to get medical care,” said Esmeralda through a translator. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to pay for the medical care and this will lead me to being flagged for not being able to pay bills.”
Read More: Despite The Pandemic, Immigrants In Mass. Say They Are Afraid To Seek Medical Care
Joe Labriola rests at home in Milford, Massachusetts, on June 29, 2020. Just days before he died, caregivers persuaded the state to let them cut off the monitoring device from his swelling ankle.
The number of people required to wear GPS monitors in Massachusetts has nearly tripled over the last eight years. But a growing number of critics question whether the technology does more harm than good.
Labriola, who was released on the state’s medical parole program, said he didn’t understand the need for a monitor in his case.
Read More: Electronic Shackles': Use Of GPS Monitors Skyrockets In Massachusetts Justice System
Nataka Crayton (l) and her partner Bobby Walker (r) tend to a vegetable garden at the Urban Farming Institute in Mattapan, Massachusetts, on July 9, 2020.
According to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, more than 5,000 Massachusetts farms are individually owned. Just 21 of them are owned by a Black individual.
"When we first came in we were the only Black people involved," said Walker. "All the people that we were talking to were like, 'Nah, we don’t want to come to your neighborhood.' … So, we decided that we have to do it for ourselves."
Read More: Meet The People Trying To Seed A New Generation Of Black Farmers
Tamy-Fee Muhneed (l), her son Elijah (c) and Nick Scibelli (r) pose for a portrait in Swampscott, Massachusetts, on July 20, 2020. They led an ultimately unsuccessful effort to recall Town Selectman Don Hause from office after he criticized the Black Lives Matter movement and the idea of white privilege at a local restaurant.
“People have absolutely been saying, ‘Don’s a great guy, you shouldn’t be doing this,’” said Scibelli at the time. “The question is whether or not he’s equipped to uphold the civil liberties and safety of persons of color in Swampscott.”
Read More: In Swampscott, A Racial Debate Sparks A Recall Push
James Durago (l) William Gano (r) from East Boston pose for a photo in Copley Square in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 22, 2020.
In July, GBH News sent five reporters to five different locations to get a sense of whether residents were heeding the state mandate on face coverings. In Copley Square, most people were wearing masks. But not everyone.
"I don't like to follow the law, I guess you could say," said a maskless Durago. "I mean, I do wear a mask when I really have to, like if I'm on the bus or something. But other than that, if I don't really have to wear it, then I'm not going to."
Garland Wintzer (l) of Jamaica Plain and Joseph Pires (r) of Dorchester pose for a photo on July 30, 2020 in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.
Cyclists of color are seeking cultural change to eliminate the hazards of “biking while Black,” and to expand opportunities for communities of color to ride.
“Biking is seen as like a thing that white people do for fun and Black people do because they can't afford cars,” said Wintzer, adding that he gets nervous when riding past police. “Just because I'm a Black kid on an expensive nice bike. There are all those stereotypes about stealing bikes and stuff.”
Read More: Racism Is Often The First Hurdle For Black Bicyclists
Atyia Martin focused on racial equity as Boston's first chief resilience officer, but left City Hall in 2018 — because, she said, "I realized ... that what I did was not a priority."
For close observers of Boston politics, Mayor Marty Walsh’s announcement in June that he was forming an “equity and inclusion cabinet” raised an obvious question: Haven’t we been here before?
Martin said the resilience strategy she authored for the city three years ago was not prioritized as it should have been. Now, Boston is recommitting itself to Martin’s vision — and in the process, offering a tacit acknowledgment that it still hasn’t been fully realized.
“The resilience strategy, Resilient Boston itself, was not treated as a resource,” Martin said.
Read More: Boston's Latest Racial Equity Push Isn't New
When Gricelda (l) and Gwendolyn (r) Castro of Dorchester, Massachusetts, first started going to BASE about two years ago, sports weren’t really their thing. Now, the two sisters have the tools to play just about any position on a softball field. Gwendolyn’s a catcher and plays second base, while Gricelda plays shortstop, third and pitches.
The BASE — which reopened in July after going dark for three months because of the pandemic — is where they, like many other Boston kids, found not only a team, but a second home.
For the Castro sisters, it's been an oasis.
Read: At The BASE In Roxbury, A Lesson In Resiliency As Youth Sports, Classes Resume
Second-grade teacher Lauren Keefe prepares her classroom at Delaney Elementary School in Wrentham, Massachusetts, for a hybrid re-opening on Sept. 14, 2020.
Classroom preparations in 2020 were more complex than ever and came with a lot of new things — from added emotions to face-covering masks.
“I would definitely lie if I said I wasn't nervous,” she said. "This, as we know, is unprecedented time [for] education in history.”
Read More: Here's How One Second-Grade Teacher Is Preparing To Welcome Students Back This Fall
Wilder Jean, a 50-year-old nursing supervisor, rests in front of his home in Easton, Massachusetts, on Aug. 14, 2020. In April, Wilder got COVID-19 and was hooked up to a ventilator in a Boston hospital and put into a coma. More than three months later, he continued to struggle with the long-term side effects from the illness.
Jean is one of more than 7,000 long-term care workers in Massachusetts who had gotten COVID as of August, and the majority were people of color, many of them immigrants.
“I didn’t know if I was going to make it," said Jean, who spent 24 days on a ventilator with no visits from his family. "My doctors eventually said my condition was one they did not see before.”
Read More: COVID Made Nursing Home Caregiving A Deadly Occupation; Immigrants And Minorities Bear The Brunt
Bob Perry, owner of Cheapo Records in Central Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, poses for a photo outside his store on Aug. 27, 2020.
Many arts organizations and small businesses were just trying to hang on as the pandemic forced them to close. Businesses like Cheapo Records, which opened in 1977, have benefited from grants and loans, but it’s hard to make up the lost revenue.
"I'm not trying to save the world," Perry said. "I'm just trying to have a cool store and make enough money to pay my mortgage."
Val Casagranda (l) and her son Camden (r) pose for a photo on their front porch in Worcester, Massachusetts, on Sept. 11, 2020.
People with school-aged children are often juggling three priorities in the age of COVID-19: Working, health and safety, and helping their children get a good education.
A temporary provision in state law allowed the YMCA in Worcester to launch a program caring for school-aged children learning remotely. Camden got into the YMCA program, which Val said was a relief.
“We didn't know what we were going to do," she said. "It was like, 'Who's quitting their job?' That was our only option."
Read More: How Do You Manage Child Care When School Is Remote? Worcester Strives To Give Families Options
Pearl Johnson of Boston, Massachusetts closes her eyes during a march from Nubian Square to City Hall on Sept. 26, 2020, to protest a Kentucky grand jury's decision not to charge the police officers involved in the killing of Breonna Taylor.
The protestors were demanding justice for Taylor and an end to police violence.
"Black women are tired of you all becoming concerned after we are a hashtag," said Monica Cannon-Grant, activist and founder of Violence in Boston, during the rally. "Protect us while we're here."
Yasenia Guererro (r) helps her son Javi (l), who has autism, in their backyard in Lawrence, Massachusetts, on Sept. 23, 2020.
There are about 170,000 students with special needs enrolled in Massachusetts schools. Many of their parents have said they are torn between how to best keep their children's education on track while also keeping them safe during the pandemic, especially in cities and towns with high numbers of COVID-19 cases.
"The longest [Javi’s] been [able] to sit is 12 seconds,” Guerrero said. “So remote hasn't been much success for him.”
Anne Laurie Pierre, a senior at Everett High School, sits at her desk in her bedroom as she participates in an online Spanish class on Sept. 30, 2020. Pierre's high school, like many in the state, is providing online-only education as a precaution against the spread of COVID-19.
Pierre loves school. She excels in it. But she's afraid of losing motivation during a year that could shape her future.
"Motivation and passion is what drives me," said Pierre, who wants to be a doctor. "And if I lose that, then it just stops everything."
Read More: COVID and the Classroom: What it's like to be a high school senior during a pandemic
Brianna Sink of Sunapee, New Hampshire, holds a sign while attending the Boston Women's March on Oct. 17, 2020. Hundreds of people gathered on the Boston Common for the fourth such rally since President Donald Trump was elected in 2016.
This year's march took place against the backdrop of a bitter fight in Washington, D.C., over the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg — a feminist icon who spent her career advancing women's rights — after her death in September.
As Sink's sign indicates, a main theme throughout the event was encouraging people to vote in the November election and expand the number of women in elected office.
Read More: Election 2020: What's Next
Photographers OJ Slaughter (l) and Phillip Keith (r) sit together in East Boston, Massachusetts, on Oct. 22, 2020. Slaughter and Keith have been on the ground at protests from Boston to Washington D.C., documenting marches for justice and equality, particularly within the Black Lives Matter movement.
“I think a lot about how in middle school, high school, college ... I didn't see a lot of people that looked like me and that looked like my community,” said Slaughter. “I really wanted to challenge that idea of what our future history looks like.”
Keith added, "I think that the Black community needs to see images of themselves with dignity and with power and respect and love."
Daymian Mejia, a senior at Lesley University, poses for a portrait outside of his apartment in Medford, Massachusetts, on Oct. 28, 2020. Mejia has a mood disorder and said the pandemic has increased his stress and depression.
A national survey conducted this fall found 90 percent of students are experiencing stress or anxiety as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Black, Latino and Native American students were more likely to report they’re stressed and depressed on campus.
“Every single emotion, everything that you do, just feels like it's somewhat distorted,” Mejia said.
Read More: A Tint Over Everything': College Students Of Color Face Greater Stress
Mary Whitney sits for a portrait in her living room in Milton, Massachusetts, on Oct. 31, 2020. Whitney has been a poll worker for years, but decided to sit November's election out because of her fear of catching the coronavirus.
Across the country this year, thousands of poll workers — who are mostly older Americans — made the same decision as Whitney. COVID-19 made the work too risky.
Whitney came to the decision after working the Massachusetts primary.
“At the end of the night, I said, you know, I didn't feel safe here,” Whitney said.
Read More: In An Election Year During A Pandemic, Senior Poll Workers Pass The Baton
Michael Williams Jr. holds up photo of his grandfather Jerry Williams in Hyde Park, Massachusetts.
Jerry, a dedicated provider for his family throughout his life, died of COVID-19 on Mar. 30 at Brigham and Women's Hospital, where he had been admitted for a little over a week. He was 85 years old.
On Nov. 13, Massachusetts crossed a grim milestone of 10,000 deaths due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Each of those lost, like Jerry Williams, is so much more than a statistic.
Michael Jr. said he was inspired by his grandfather’s resilience. Jerry had survived a life in the Jim Crow South. Then he thrived driving a cab in Boston, when the city was still overtly racist, never daring to cross into places like Carson Beach, where all people now walk freely. Jerry told him that he could thrive, too.
“’Because you’re stronger than that,’” Michael Jr. recalled his grandfather telling him. “’Use me, use your grandmother as an example of what it takes, and also [of the] strength that’s in you, because you come from us. Let that be your light to a brighter path.’”
Read More: Lives Remembered: A look back at some of the lives we’ve lost to COVID
Sam Smith, a medical school applicant, sits at his desk in his apartment in Somerville, Massachusetts, on Nov. 21, 2020.
The number of medical school applicants was up 18 percent this year over last, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. Medical school admissions officers call it the "Fauci Effect."
The experience of the last year “makes me think, there’s probably going to be another pandemic” in the future, said Smith. “So I want to be on the front lines of the next one.”
Read More: Med Schools Are Seeing A Surge Of Applications. It's Called The 'Fauci Effect'
David Cho, managing director and chief procurement officer at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, poses for a portrait in a lecture hall in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, on Nov. 23, 2020.
Cho analyzed the diversity of UMass vendors and found that out of its $1 billion budget, UMass spends 2 percent on businesses owned by people of color.
“The difference between diversity and inclusion is that diversity is being at the party, inclusion is being invited to dance,” Cho said. “There's a ton more that we can do.”
Read More: Prodded by Racial Reckoning, Colleges Aim To Increase Minority Contracting. Will They Succeed?
Dr. Gabriela Andujar-Vazquez of Tufts New England Medical Center in Boston receives the very first COVID-19 vaccine given to the hospital's frontline workers on Dec. 15, 2020.
Four hospitals in the state got 6,000 first doses of the two-stage Pfizer vaccine the first day it was available in the U.S.
The associate hospital epidemiologist, who regularly sees COVID-19 patients, didn’t flinch as she was injected with the vaccine.
“It's definitely a relief,” she said. “[I'm] doing this for the community. Not only for us, but for everyone else.”
Read More: As U.S. Surpasses 300,000 COVID Deaths, Boston Hospital Workers Begin Receiving Vaccinations
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