When Olivia Gatwood returned from her first grocery store outing during quarantine, she stripped down before coming inside to reduce the risk of cross-contamination.
As the 28-year-old esteemed poet, YouTuber, and activist stood unclothed in the kitchen, meticulously wiping down containers and transferring food from bag to fridge, the weight of the coronavirus pandemic hit her. She got really, really sad.
"I decided to capture it via self-portrait," she tells ELLE.com. "I'd watched
Portrait of a Lady on Fire the night before and was struck by the idea of love as the act of being witnessed and how, in isolation, I'm the only one witnessing myself, which I think is the the basis for all self-portraits."
She plopped down on a stool in her underwear—hanging plants and a neon sign her backdrop—and stared solemnly into the camera. Gatwood posted the result (above) for her 50,000 Instagram followers using the caption: "Self-Portrait of a Lady in Quarantine." Then, she put out a call for others to send her their own quarantine pics. Her idea was to make one collage, but within twenty-four hours she received several hundred photos via DM.
They were all "so beautiful," Gatwood says, and she couldn't imagine leaving any out. So, she started a new Instagram account @girlsofisolation as a way to curate them.
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