Letter from the Editor:
When the Editorial Board and I collectively agreed to create a quarantine issue in mid-May, we had no idea how it would turn out. I myself assumed it would be a small collection of personal projects our staff completed during quarantine, but it evolved into one of SHEI’s most multi-faceted digital issues.
In this issue, we examine how the Coronavirus pandemic forced us into living among stagnancy, paralleled with anxiety about our future.
Our fashion and photo teams collaborated remotely by executing “Facetime Photoshoots”, which consisted of single models, clad in hand-drawn jeans and safety-pinned french braids, wearing looks of tired, wistful, hopeful, and unsure expressions.
Anxiety is undeniably a theme threaded in this issue, including in Digital Features Editor Melina Schaefer’s “Lies of Four Walls”. Schaefer states that, “The abstractions of fear, anxiety, social discomfort and pain seem to cower in the face of the truth that you belong to something bigger than the world inside yourself, inside the four walls you built.”
We have all been living in our own walls — metaphorically and literally — these past few months. As the creation of the Isolation Issue continued, pressing issues arose, intersecting between public health, race, and politics, among others. In our Street Style section of the issue, we share imagery our photographers made during the Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery. We want to use our platform to continue the conversation of the Black Lives Matter Movement and end the systematic racism entrenched in our country’s history and current society.
As Creative Director Evan Parness and I were digitally rifling through the images from the issue’s photo projects, Katie Corbett’s image, which is the cover (and found on pages 22-23), struck me. Experimenting with a lens polarizer, Corbett’s image has a tonal warmth to it; the setting sun’s rays gleam from the corner, while the model basks in the sun, sitting in solitude in a still river. Her arched back and neck craned upwards toward the sun almost evoke a sense of her being possessed, or attempting to escape into the sun while the Earth is grounding her. As Schaefer concludes, “As we heal from these events and try to piece ourselves back together, I encourage you to remember one thing: the Earth is rising to meet you, and if it rises, then you’re not alone.”
As you flip through this issue — ranging from creative photo projects made by passionate photographers to veracious and insightful written-features of personal experiences during quarantine — reflect on what resonates with you. Perhaps something from our Isolation Issue will bring insight you can carry with yourself as we slowly emerge into the fall.
–Natalie Guisinger, Editor-in-Chief