18 mars
I wrote a paper stating that I was going out to get fresh air and maybe take photographs and I went out with it. The walk in the city was quiet, only disturbed by numerous joggers and emergency sirens. I was one of the last to enjoy the walk along the rhone river side, city workers were putting barriers to forbid the access. That decision had just been taken in the afternoon. [Laurent Reyes]
22 mars
The way from home to my workplace - the only walk I'm authorised to have everyday - consists mainly in going through this 2km-long tunnel. [Laurent Reyes]
24 mars
Ritual. The problem of a diary, especially when we are secluded, is it's tendency to be very self-centered. Here is me facing my hand-washing altar. [Laurent Reyes]
27 mars
I applauded, despite me. From their window, French people are encouraged to applause the medical staff. I despise this tendency to show off support when it's visible instead of listening to them when they were drawing our attention on the difficulties of French public hospitals. But it felt good to applause and shout through the window with other neighbours. It was cheerful for me, it wasn't about the medical staff. [Laurent Ryes]
1er avril
While I was working in my lab, I heard the neighbors through the window. They were using the construction site next to their building as a playground. It could look like a warzone. [Laurent reyes]
2 avril
Everyday I grasp better the importance and the weight on our lives of the pandemic. It also gives me a vivid intuition that actually scares me of how terrible will be the following climate crisis. [Laurent Reyes]
9 avril
Since the lockdown, I'm disconnected with the sun and the people. My days now start in the middle of the day and end at dawn. [Laurent Reyes]
11 Avril
26 days of lockdown in France. Laure works with me at the lab. Her and Pierre, her boyfriend, are the only two people I have been seeing since the lockdown. [Laurent Reyes]
12 avril
Tomorrow the President will announce for the second time an extension of the lockdown. Unlike before, I am now more fearing about how this virus is likely to keep haunting us and not just vanish as it came. But still, some excitement remains by seeing in this catastrophe an opportunity to question and redefine our existence and society. [Laurent Reyes]
15 avril
When I went out today, the girl on this picture I took a few days ago was at her window again. She told me her name, Salomé and I showed her this photo on my phone. Since I was standing on the sidewalk, I had to raise my phone so she could see better. She naturally just took my phone in her hands. After two days without talking to anyone, it felt great. Almost flirty. [Laurent Reyes]
18 avril
Since the beginning of the containment, I find people way more relaxed when they see me coming with a camera. This woman hidden behind a hat hadn't seen me. But the high school teenagers I've just come across let me shoot them while they were smoking pot and drinking in the stairway. [Laurent Reyes]
23 avril
Picture taken with my smartphone while I was jogging this morning. Two activities I had never done before the containment. Are the containment measures kind of forcing us to adopt behaviours that are encouraged by the dominant ideology of our society and economy? [Laurent Reyes]
29 avril
It is allowed to walk or do some exercise only within a km around the house. Luckily for me it encompasses both sides of the river. [Laurent Reyes]
1 mai
There was an infierno last night in the building across the road. Since it's a big building now threatening to collapse, many of us inhabitants have been cleared out of the surrounding buildings. There hasn't been any serious injury. I was lucky my flat and my stuff didn't burn, but the chief fireman told us we may not be able to go back to our places, even to gather some personal items, before end of may. [Laurent Reyes]
1er mai
María's home. Her place is like a gallery of the finest taste in which you want to live. Although we aren't close friends, her place was my first shelter from the grey rain and loneliness. [Laurent Reyes]
14 mai
Today I was finally allowed to go to my flat and grab some personal items. The building facing mine had been set in fire accidentally by a bored kid who tried to reproduce a chemical experience he saw on internet. It is a rather typical accident, but the partial responsibility of the containment is not deniable. [Laurent Reyes]
24 mai
Containment is over, for now. We have an urge to be in nature together, and we are inhabited by an acute concern for our social, political and economic future. Here in Taillefer massif, Alps. [Laurent Reyes]
© Laurent Reyes