When Harry Sweeney began studying photography in 2019, he assumed his camera roll would be packed with gigs and nights out with friends from the University of the West of England in Bristol.
Instead, he kept a “visual diary” of life stuck in a student house during the pandemic.
Harry’s cohort has spent their entire three years of college grappling with the fallout from Covid-19.
Days before graduation, he ponders what that looked like for him.
“We’ve had a completely unique university experience because of Covid-19,” says Harry.
He stayed with his parents in Essex during the first national lockdown.
And when he returned to Bristol in his second year, he did most of his work online, feet up on the coffee table, in a house he shared with friends.
“I probably went to college a couple of times as a sophomore,” says Harry.
“We just spent a lot, a lot of time on that sofa in the living room, basically… we just worked here in the kitchen all the time.”
With bars and clubs closed, housemates used their imaginations to recreate the nightlife they thought they would have.
“We had a house pub crawl the second year,” says Harry.
“We had a bar of sorts in every room – so we had a sports bar, my room was a jazz bar.”
Trips to the supermarket have been halted by bouts of Covid, says Harry, becoming ‘routine’.
“I can’t remember how many times we had to isolate,” he says.
“You’d say, ‘Let’s go online and get some groceries.’
“I think humans are pretty good at adapting quickly…you get used to these routines of how you go about things.”
Then there were the do-it-yourself haircuts while the salons were closed.
“It happened quite a lot,” Harry says, pointing to the photo of a roommate smearing dye on someone else’s hair.
“His was very, very yellow for a while.
“We passed someone on the street and they were like, ‘You need more peroxide.'”
Harry recalls answering his phone at night and ‘saw all five posts were about Covid’.
“We were just constantly being bombed,” he says.
“This amount of information, like rules and stuff that’s written all over your face all the time, is really, really unhealthy.”
But working life went on for others outside of his student community during last year’s lockdown.
“I was trying to document in a way the work that was considered key work and how it needed to be carried forward,” he says, “but we were set inside.
“There were definitely times when it felt claustrophobic — especially when the house was messy.
“We really felt that what we got from the varsity experience wasn’t what we paid for… but I think the tutors made the best of what they had.”
Despite the difficulties, Harry would not change his university experience.
“Even though a second year was weird and it was struggling at times, I’ve been fortunate to have great roommates,” he says.
“I was so excited for the whole build [last] Summer, knowing we could go clubbing again.
“Honestly, it made you so much more grateful to see your friends again. It made you more mindful in those moments.”
Harry sees his photos as “upbeat” but also an attempt to “convey the feelings of alienation and fear that many of us have” after missing out on so much.
“I wanted to capture the mix of the excitement of getting out of Covid, but also how it has shaped us,” he says, “the feeling that we are facing the reality of adult life with seemingly less preparation than generations before us. “
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