I remember kindly asking guests to remove their masks for photographs because my job as a wedding photographer seemed so pointless otherwise. The anxious law abiding types would roll their eyes at me, judging my character. Others would thank me for the moment of normalcy a standard, and often boring, wedding photograph could provide.

It’s ironic that a couple years after the outbreak of Covid-19, I am sifting through my wedding galleries searching for masked moments of love. For some Flower Girls and Ring Bearers all of life as they knew it, existed with masked faces and hard to read adult expressions. Every so often I’d chuckle to myself at the absurdity of taking a photograph of a triple masked guest, or a couple cutting a cake together incognito. For years I was trying to edit these masked photographs out of existence. Most Covid weddings followed the same bizarre timeline. Guests and loved ones would show up anxious, fully masked and with good intentions. But then the Reception would begin, drinks would flow, confidence and forgetfulness would bubble up, and the jubilation of a wedding celebration during a covid lockdown would overpower one’s personal paranoia. Masks would be removed to make conversation easier. I would document it all, happy as a clam to be earning some sort of a living. The wedding would end and I’d pack my cameras and head home high off of love. Only then, after listening to the news, I’d start wondering what strain of covid I’d have next week. Wondering if my Mother and Sister would ask me not to enter their apartment, because I had photographed a wedding. A Pariah of sorts. 

I had over 20 Chicago weddings in the books the day the world shut down. My business evaporated overnight. I photographed some dubious weddings during covid, and I was thankful for them. The paycheck and numbers in the bank felt good. I came down with a rough case of covid at the very beginning of the pandemic, before anyone really knew about it and the world shut down, after photographing 3 large wedding celebrations in the month of December 2019. I had never felt so awful and figured it was an unbelievably strong strain of the flu. 

I think everybody is going to hate this series of photographs. They might bring back memories of how bad your breath smelled behind a mask. One of those masks that you haven’t washed and used for many days in a row.