In 2020, the UK entered its first lockdown. Daily life retreated behind closed doors and no one knew what the months ahead would bring.
This Was Us is a story in pictures, bringing together the work of fourteen photographers who documented this extraordinary period of our social history. Together, their photographs create an important record of what life was really like for ordinary people living under severe restrictions.
As the COVID Inquiry seeks to conclude its investigations, this book stands as a testimony to all who lost loved ones or whose lives were changed in ways they are still finding difficult to understand.
Specifications
Published by F8 Books
300 × 230mm Landscape
180 pages, 134 images
his project was successfully funded on 18th June 2026; you can still support it with a donation here.
Featured photographers:
Andrew Moore, Barry Lewis, JJ Waller, David Sládek, Ed Sykes, David Collyer, Alys Tomlinson, Bex Day, J. A. Mortram, Ruth Toda-Nation, Olivia Harris, Alan O’Connor, Kieran Doherty and David Gilbert Wright.
“Thank you for producing This Was Us. I think it is important to remember this period in our lives that is all too fast fading from memory. I lost my mother-in-law during COVID due to cancer. She was rushed into a care home. We were not allowed to visit and slowly she died alone. Subsequent distanced funeral. Father-in-law was suffering from dementia and confused, unable to understand A horrendous time. This book encapsulates the whole period and experience. Amazing images and heartbreaking stories. What makes me really angry was the total mismanagement of lockdown, blatant touting of rules by those in power, and the underhand profiteering with nobody brought to account. Thank you once again.”
Barry Scaffold
Created during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, Our Lockdown Garden is a series of portraits and collected stories made in collaboration with residents in their 80s and 90s at my father’s retirement community in Newport Pagnell, Milton Keynes.
Marking the occasion of the 75th anniversary of VE Day, the project reflects on living history through the memories and resilience of the ‘silent generation’ — the last to have experienced both World War II and the pandemic.
Specifications
Published by The Mindful Editions
210 x 270mm Hardback
39 images, 96 pages with foil cover
Profits from the book will be donated to Rights for Residents a charity supporting people in care facilities in the UK.
Please note, due to customs and tariff issues, kindly email first to discuss international shipments.
“I am a follower of Ruth Toda-Nation on Instagram. Our Lockdown Garden is a beautifully written and photographed book dedicated to the residents who live/lived in the same assisted living facility as Ruth’s father during the Covid pandemic. These beautiful souls showed true resilience, courage and grace whilst enduring a brutal, unbending government lockdown in the name of preserving their physical health. It speaks to the soul”.
Kim Collins – Wichita, Kansas
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