Time - USA (2020-12-21)

‘A LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS’

This spring, staff and patients at Brooklyn’s

Wyckoff Heights Medical Center allowed

Meridith Kohut to document their reality on

the front line of the pandemic as COVID- 19

killed thousands in New York City. They

wanted to warn the rest of the country to

avoid their fate. On April 22, she captured

Kyle Edwards gathering lanterns from inside

one of the refrigerated semitrailers that held

the overflow of corpses. “Each body bag

represented so much pain and suffering,

lives lost and families upended,” says Kohut,

haunted that the warning went unheeded.

PHOTOGRAPH BY MERIDITH KOHUT FOR TIME