Lifestyle
How the pandemic led this documentary photographer to make her work more collaborative
Nitya Kansal (left) and her husband, Arvind Kansal (right), pose in front of their home in Cupertino, Calif.
Art inputs by Nitya Kansal/Ashima Yadava
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Art inputs by Nitya Kansal/Ashima Yadava
Ashima Yadava’s project Front Yard captures a moment in time where we all were seeking connection. In 2020, the pandemic gave Yadava the time to reflect, and so she looked to photography. She turned to her community, reaching out to her entire network, wanting to make portraits of them from their front yards, at a safe six-foot distance.
“I, just on a whim, sent an email to my entire network of neighbors and friends in the area, saying, ‘I want to record this time that we’re in. Can I please make a portrait of you?’ ” Yadava recalls.
“And because we had to keep a distance, I was, like, ‘I’ll do it across the street from your house, so can it be in your front yard?’ And the first set of responses were brilliant. People were, like, ‘Oh, yeah! We haven’t seen a person in a month! Please, come on over!’ “
Hamida Bano (right) and her husband, Dr. Anil Chopra (left), with their daughter, Nasreen Chopra (center), in their Orinda, Calif., home in April 2020.
Ashima Yadava
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Ashima Yadava
Sunitha Seshadri (left), an engineer by profession, with her daughter, Shriya, her son, Veer (right), and her husband, Harshit Chuttani (center), outside their Campbell, Calif., home.
Art inputs by Sunitha Seshadri/Ashima Yadava
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Art inputs by Sunitha Seshadri/Ashima Yadava
Sonya Pelia (right), her husband Mathew Lutzker (left) and their daughter Jasleen Pelia-Lutzker in Menlo Park, Calif., in May 2020.
Ashima Yadava
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Ashima Yadava
Yadava’s project was welcomed with enthusiasm and positivity by people who were excited to share their space with her. Families would come outside to set up. She would stand across the street with her large-format and digital cameras, ready to take their portraits.
As the project progressed, the work developed into a more personal reflection. She began to realize how this work helped her reclaim her relationship with the medium and her role as a photographer.
“I grew up in India. The one thing about documentary photography that had bothered me and that has made me feel a little weird about documentary photography [are] that power dynamics that come with photographing someone — it’s your perspective: It’s one perspective. It’s a single story,” Yadava said.
“The fact that I had this camera that was so slow, it allowed me the time to figure out my relationship with what I was doing and the people I was photographing.”
Noreen Raza (right), savors the strange spring of April 2020 with her husband, Harry Robertson (left), in their Morgan Hill, Calif., home.
Art inputs by Noreen Raza/Ashima Yadava
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Art inputs by Noreen Raza/Ashima Yadava
Nitya and Arvind Kansal pose with their dog, Kuku, in front of their Cupertino, Calif., home in April 2020.
Ashima Yadava
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Ashima Yadava
Shriya Manchanda (center left), who is a rising senior, with her sister Sanvitti (right), and parents Shruti (center right) and Alok Manchanda (left) in front of their home in Sunnyvale, Calif.
Art inputs by Shriya Manchanda/Ashima Yadava
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Art inputs by Shriya Manchanda/Ashima Yadava
“I would get the negative back and I started printing just to see and study if I’m doing it right, getting the colors right, and somewhere in that moment, I thought, ‘Wait. What if I give this back to the people and continue this conversation about how they want to be seen? This is how I saw them, this is what it is, but how do they want to be seen and what do they have to say?’ “
Thus began this collaboration of allowing those she’d photographed to become a part of the process. These black and white prints were suddenly brought to life by colors and drawings that these families would work on together.
“They would work on it as families — they would fight about it, they would talk about it, they would text me back and forth, ‘Do you think we can do this?’ It was truly a collaboration. It was something that saved all of us at that time, because I would enjoy that. I would be, like, ‘Yes, do whatever you want!’ “
Each family would contribute a unique perspective to their portraits and what emerged was a beautiful vignette of the different ethnicities that make up the Bay Area.
Manju Ramachandran stands in the front yard of her Sunnyvale, Calif., home with her son, Varun.
Art inputs by Manju Ramachandran/Ashima Yadava
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Art inputs by Manju Ramachandran/Ashima Yadava
Weeks into the pandemic, Aishwarya Ramaswamy (left) and Mukundan Swaminathan worked to juggle their careers and parenthood out of their Union City, Calif., home in April 2020, as they tried to keep their kids, Krish and Mayura, entertained.
Ashima Yadava
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Ashima Yadava
Sonya Pelia (right) and her husband, Matthew Lutzker (left), with their daughter, Jasleen Pelia-Lutzker, outside their home in Menlo Park, Calif.
Art inputs by Sonya Pelia and Jasleen Pelia-Lutzker/Ashima Yadava
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Art inputs by Sonya Pelia and Jasleen Pelia-Lutzker/Ashima Yadava
Yadava called it “inverting the process,” where she, as the photographer, documented her observation and returned black and white prints to the families so that they could share their feelings through how they decided to fill in the image. Each family had a different perspective: Some filled their images with flowers on branches, and others covered their walls with spiders. The results that emerged were always a joy for Yadava to discover.
Our homes were a sacred place during the pandemic, and these families welcomed Yadava to capture a glimpse into their realities. It was created during a time of tragedy and disconnect, but lives on as a record of time.
Since then, Yadava has continued the series and plans to release a book. Her decision to expand the project in a post-COVID world was ignited by the joyful exchange with families and how barriers between neighbors can come down. With this collaboration, Yadava hopes that people are reminded of the resilience in humanity and that we can find connections between us all if we open our worlds up to it.
Smita Rao (left) and Manoj Mhapankar (right) with their daughter, Aria, outside of their Milpitas, Calif., home.
Art inputs by Smita Rao and Manoj Mhapankar/Ashima Yadava
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Art inputs by Smita Rao and Manoj Mhapankar/Ashima Yadava
Ashima Yadava is a conceptual documentary photographer and printmaker. She in based San Francisco, where she works in digital and analog methods. See more of Ashima’s work on her website, AshimaYadava.com.
Photo edit by Grace Widyatmadja. Text edit by Zach Thompson.
Since leaving office, former Vice President Mike Pence founded the policy and advocacy organization Advancing American Freedom.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
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Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Since leaving office, former Vice President Mike Pence founded the policy and advocacy organization Advancing American Freedom.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Former Vice President Mike Pence played a key role in bringing President Trump to power in 2016. By putting his name on the Republican ticket, he helped reassure the Republican establishment and evangelical voters who were wary of Trump’s brash brand of populism.
Pence’s departure from Trump’s leadership of the Republican party began when Trump called on Pence to refuse to certify the results of the 2020 election — pressure Pence rejected.
“For four years, we had a close working relationship. It did not end well,” Pence wrote in his memoir So Help Me God, which was released in 2022.
In the years since leaving office, Pence has been advocating for an ideological restructure of the Republican party, and founded the policy and advocacy organization Advancing American Freedom. Pence builds on the theme of reimagining the Republican party in his new book What Conservatives Want, which provides a critique of the second Trump administration and what he terms the “populist right.”
In an interview with Morning Edition, Pence detailed to NPR’s Steve Inskeep his critique of the second Trump administration, shared his perspective on civil rights legislation and challenged Trump’s tariffs and other interventions in the economy.
Listen to the full interview by clicking on the blue play button above; and read highlights from the conversation below.
‘The populist right’ does not represent conservative beliefs
Pence believes that Trump has embraced “the populist right” over traditional conservatives in the Republican party.
The sale of economic American company U.S. Steel to Nippon Steel in Japan exemplifies this shift, Pence said.
In his first term, President Trump opposed the sale. But in his second term, he approved the sale and took a golden share — a class of shares in which a government can own a very small percentage of the company but has outsized voting rights.
Pence said that he was taken aback by Trump’s decision to take a golden share.
Free trade is essential to American conservatism
Pence takes umbrage with his former boss’ tariff-laden economic policy.
Pence said it violates conservatism’s bedrock belief in the power of free trade, and Trump has gone about granting exceptions to tariffs in an unfair way.
Granting waivers to large corporations from certain tariffs is “one of the lesser reported aspects of the tariff regime that’s been imposed by the administration,” Pence added.
Trump and Pence ran in 2020 on a mission to “drain the swamp,” rooting out government corruption and wasteful spending. However, Pence said Trump appears to have shifted from those goals.
“There’s maybe nothing more swampy than the battle over getting tariff waivers for big business,” Pence said.
Women’s rights on the right
There is a debate among the ultraconservative right about the role of women in civic life.
The concept of “household voting,” has become a familiar talking point for ultra-right-wing communities online. Supporters of “household voting” advocate that every American household should get one vote, the vote being that of the husband’s. This concept has been promoted by figures such as Abby Johnson, a prominent anti-abortion activist who spoke at the 2020 Republican National Convention. When asked about whether he supported household voting, Pence said he is not aligned
“It’s one person, one vote in this country. And people have bled and died for that principle throughout the years of our history,” Pence said.
He added that American families don’t need to be propped up by government programs to boost childbirth. “What American families need is an application of the kind of principles that will create higher wages, more opportunities, more jobs,” Pence said.
Should conservatives stand for civil rights?
Pence said he was an admirer of senator and one-time presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.
Notably, Goldwater voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
“Should conservatives stand for civil rights?” asked Inskeep.
Pence responded that civil rights are important to conservatives, but that equality of opportunity is what legislation ought to enshrine, not equality of outcome.
Pence added that he stood by the Supreme Court’s decision to ban partisan gerrymandering on the basis of race, rendering ineffective a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Milly Alcock in Supergirl.
Warner Bros. Pictures
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Warner Bros. Pictures
Hollywood’s newest Supergirl is kind of a dirtbag — in the good way. Fearless and grumpy, Supergirl (Milly Alcock) sets out on a quest to support a new pal’s revenge journey and to make a point that should be clear by now: Never mess with a lady’s dog. Also featuring David Corenswet and Jason Momoa, is Supergirl a worthy follow up to Superman?
If you want more DC superhero action, check out these episodes:
‘Superman’ takes off and nails the landing
‘The Batman’ puts the emo in emote
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