PREFACE
I began the YEAR ZERO LOCKDOWN JOURNAL on March 20, 2020, the first day of the lockdown in Los Angeles. I ended it a year later on March 19th, 2021. I called it YEAR ZERO because someday - ten, fifty, or a hundred years from now – people will look back and say the changes that the pandemic set in motion were so monumental and historic that it marked the beginning of a new era. At least that’s the conceit.
I take photos. I write. I ride bikes. I live alone. On the first day of lockdown, I took my bike and camera and rode the empty, silent streets. I came back and wrote about what I saw, experienced and the encounters I had. And I kept it up for the next twelve months - through our collective isolation, the ups and downs of the lockdown, my day-to-day private grind, the politicization of the pandemic, the slow halting opening of society, the anti-vax protests, the George Floyd protests, the elections, the Stop-the-Steal movement, and the storming of the Capital. Some of the most intense George Floyd and Stop-the-Steal protests happened at the police headquarters and City Hall a few blocks from where I live. I had a front row seat – with a camera and a pen.
I felt compelled to document the Covid pandemic – for myself, for others who weren’t going out, and for the people in the future who might wonder what it was like to have been alive in the time of Covid. This pandemic was beyond anything we thought possible or could even imagine. It’s the stuff of science fiction and dystopian nightmares. But the writers and doomsayers were right.
Each of us who has lived through Year Zero have our own stories to tell. This is mine.
– Richard Edson
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