What started off as an idea to take portraits of about 20 front line workers in the community ended up giving me a window into the many ways the people of Guelph are showing resilience through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Every reporter at GuelphToday was asked by editor Tony Saxon to come up with some ideas for end-of-year projects to share with the community. The pitch for my project was to take 20 or so regular people working the front lines in Guelph and feature them in a portrait gallery.
After it was approved I wrote up a proposal and sent it out to a number of organizations in the community, as well as to some community leaders. Surprisingly, almost everyone I reached out to was interested in participating in the project.
It took about two weeks to go from proposal to having all the portraits scheduled and captured.
One thing I realized soon after taking the first portraits is that everybody has a story. Each person was touched by COVID-19 in a different way and had their own reasons for working their way through it.
I would like to thank everyone who participated in the project and those who helped to nominate the subjects for the portraits.
Some readers were disappointed that one kind of worker or another was not featured in the gallery. I agree, and wish I had the time and space to do 1,000 more of these. Even then we wouldn't be able to feature nearly everybody who was deserving.
The gallery attached to this story is an exclusive look for GuelphToday+ members at alternate poses by 10 of the people who participated in the series.