As the first American casualties of covid-19 were announced, President Trump
kept insisting it would disappear “with the heat” or “at the end of the month” or
“without a vaccine.” Like a disgraced, fringe science teacher, he entertained this idea
at one coronavirus news conference: “I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a
minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection
inside, or almost a cleaning?” With leadership like this, the country was receiving an
injection — of chaos.
The pandemic ripped through the rest of 2020, and America was not only more
splintered than ever, but also a dangerous place to be. Some politicians declared to the
public, “I trust the science,” as if that were an unprecedented and heroic stance.
As we navigated our way into 2021, questions about what to believe led — painfully
and predictably — to doubts about the most reliable way we had to stay safe: wearing
masks. With the return to schools looming, the debate about masks and children —
masks as protectors, or masks as educational folly — played out like a plague of rants.
No one seemed to trust others to do the right thing anymore, whatever that was. By
summer’s end, trust felt like the latest variant to avoid.T
rust takes lots of forms, but can we actually see it in a photograph the way we can
identify a cloud or a wave, or an overt moment of joy or sadness? The photo essays
that follow capture a full tableau of human responses in year two of the pandemic —
trepidation, but also a sense of renewal; celebration, but caution as well. And despite
rancor and confusion still being in as steady supply as the vaccine itself, the permutations
of trust have their own presence here, too, if we’re open enough to seeing them.
When Jay Wescott went on tour with rock band Candlebox, he was documenting
one of the many performing acts that returned to the road this summer, after the long
hiatus. On tour there’s a lot variables you can control, and just as many, if not more,
that you can’t — and in the time of covid, control and trust form their own essential but
perilous interplay. The picture on Page 14 of the band’s drummer, Robin Diaz, who is
vaccinated but unmasked, setting up his kit in such proximity to road manager Carlos
Novais, vaccinated and masked, not only captures that still-odd dynamic that goes
into making any live performance happen right now; it is also a welcome contrast to all
the images of masked and unmasked protesters screaming at each other about what
and whom to trust. On tour with Candlebox, Westcott observed how trust is carrying
the band forward, creating harmonies on and off the stage.
Much farther away, in Michael Robinson Chavez’s pictures from Sicily, we bear
witness to religious celebrations as part of saint’s days, which were canceled last year
because of the pandemic. The celebrations resumed, though stripped down, this
September, with vaccines readily available, but then, as Chavez notes, the people of
Sicily were vaccinated at lower numbers than those in other regions of the country. In
one image, we see a tuba player, his mask down below his chin as he blows his notes out
into the world. Behind him are masked adults and maskless children. And, perhaps all
through the festival, a trust in God to watch over them.
Lucía Vázquez trained her lens on the eager crowds of young women who
descended upon Miami, a city known for its own style of carnival-type celebrations,
though decidedly less holy ones. These women have left masks out of their outfits and
are trusting something not quite scientific and not quite political, but more personal:
their guts. Such a calculation comes down to a conviction that either you won’t get the
coronavirus, or, if you do, you’ll survive. It means placing a lot of trust in yourself.
As a visual meditation, the pictures in this issue offer a portrait of a historical
moment in which trust and distrust have defined us. Ultimately, the photographs that
follow, reflecting various realities of the pandemic, are tinted with hope that we can
reclaim our lives. Not exactly as they were in the past, but in a way that still resembles
how we had once imagined them for the future. These images remind us that even in
our fractured, confused and suffering world, it remains possible that where we can
find trust again, we can be healed.David Rowell is deputy editor of The Washington Post Magazine.In 2021, the
pandemic
forced us all
to think hard
about who
we do and
don’t trust
THE PHOTO ISSUE
A
s a nation, we are supposed to be
built around trust. Look at the back
of the bills in your wallet. “In God
We Trust.”
Trust the system.
Trust yourself.
Trust but verify.
Trust your instincts.
Love may be the emotion we like to think
ultimately propels us, but it’s trust that in-
forms how we go about our daily lives. And
yet. Our level of trust, our very foundation,
has been crumbling for a long time now.
Scandals, abuse and corruption in the major
pillars of our society — religious institutions,
education, business, military, government,
health care, law enforcement, even the
sports world — have made us a wary people.
When the pandemic came, first as mur-
murs that were easy to tune out, then as an
unbounded crisis we couldn’t tune into
enough, our relationship to trust was newly
infected with something we didn’t fully un-
derstand. And before long, who and what we
trusted — or didn’t — in the form of elected
leaders, scientists and doctors became one
more cause of death here and all over the
world. In this way, distrust was a kind of
pandemic itself: widely contagious and
passed by the mouth.
BY DAVID ROWELL
Fr om top: Parishioners prepare for the celebration of the Feast of the Guardian Angel in Priolo
Gargallo, Italy, in October. Nurse Raghda Samour administers a coronavirus vaccine to Ibtisam
Abdall, 60, in Gaza City in August.6 PHOTOS FROM TOP: MICHAEL ROBINSON CHAVEZ; SALWAN GEORGES