The Wish You Were Here project started in 2014, and I am proud to say that I have never missed a single week in all these years! We are a group of women photographers from all around the globe. We each submit a photo a week that represents what is happening in our world. Some of our members stay rather close to home (me) and some of our members have no home and travel the world with their families, posting from a different country on the regular. The images are curated on our blog every Wednesday and arranged in such a way that each image has connections to the one above and below it. Now that the quarantine is keeping us all at home, the images seem even more connected. As we navigate this worldwide epidemic, I see many similarities but still so many differences as well. These are my first 18 images for 2020, our seventh year working on this project together.
Week 1, A Grand Start To The New Year, New York
Week 2, Yet Another Binary Birthday, Massachusetts
This little group and I have been through so much together. Over the past 7 years, babies have been born and are now in elementary school! Kids have graduated high school and are in college, we had an exhibit in Paris last year. We have seen the seasons change, visitors and countries come and go, we have been through death and rebirth. I have made some amazing friends who I will treasure forever! I am so glad I answered “yes” to the universe when I saw Nicola Berry first post this idea so long ago!
Week 3, Mid-Storm Dog Walk, Massachussetts
Week 4, The Hartsbrook Delegates, Massachusetts
Week 5, Frozen Lace, Massachusetts
Week 6, Empty Field, Massachusetts
Week 7, Bullet Journaling, Massachusetts
Week 8, Three On the Couch, Massachusetts
Week 9, Touring Colleges Again, Connecticut
Week 10, Combining Obsessions, Massachusetts
Week 11, Pandemic Ready, Massachusetts
Week 12, Flour Run, Vermont
Week 13, Pretzel Baking, Massachusetts
Week 14, Early Spring in the Garden, Massachusetts (option 1)
Week 14, Early Spring in the Garden, Massachusetts (option 2)
Week 15, Ecology Class in the Time of Covid, Massachusetts
Week 16, Daze, Massachusetts
Week 17, Spring? Massachusetts (Just to keep things real, it has snowed 5 times since I took this image, we woke up to frost on the cars this morning too, but I can feel spring settling in for good now, I hope!)
Week 18, Catching Frogs, Massachusetts
When I look back on this start to my year I can’t help but see how drastically our life has quieted down. That first week when I was taking the long exposure in Grand Central Station I literally had my face pressed onto the marble railing trying to keep my camera steady. I didn’t think it was a great idea to mash my mouth onto a surface that was being touched and sat on by the many tourists and locals hanging around up there. But now I can’t believe there was ever a time that I would even remotely think that was ok. By week 11 even the statue of Sojourner Truth was wearing gloves and a mask. Little did we know that we would be going on 9 weeks of quarantine with no end in sight.
I do blog posts with my image submissions to Wish You Were Here a few times a year. If you are interested you can look through my blog archives for all of them, this is my 2019 wrap up post. and this is weeks 26-39, 2019. But to truly appreciate this project, please head on over the Wish You Were Here website to see how everyone spends their days. You will not regret it, get a cup of tea, and look for the connections!