“Covid was a new and invisible terror,” the photographer Aaron Yeandle remembers. “March 2020 was a very scary time, as we were just seeing and hearing about these mass deaths all over the world.” In Guernsey, where Yeandle is based, the first lockdown ran for 88 days, starting on March 24th. During that time, the artist and his wife, like many of us, were flooded with countless pictures of people in hazmat suits, watching from their apartment as the global death count rose. Masks became a part of their daily lives.

You can view this article and much more with minimal banner ads in our brand new app for iOS, iPadOS, and Android. And for $24.99/year, you can have a banner ad-free experience.

Yeandle’s work has always been rooted in history and culture, inspired by overlooked communities and hidden stories. Amid the pandemic, he found himself considering the heritage of masks. He knew masks resembling animals had been used in medicine during the European plague of the 17th century, but they’d also been used in countless other ways, many magical or sacred. Some communities donned them in celebration of life’s milestones, while others wore them to communicate with their departed ancestors.

During those frenzied early weeks of the pandemic, Yeandle set to work creating masks of his own. With his wife as his model and collaborator, he then created formal portraits for the Covid era, all within the confines of their flat. “All I knew at the time was that I wanted to keep myself creative for my own mental health,” he says now. “Furthermore, I wanted to capture the pandemic and our historical experience using a very different approach. In many ways, this moment of global fear and uncertainty was actually a very self-explorative time to be an artist.”

He emerged from the lockdown with PPE-19, a photographic series that has since been exhibited in England, New Zealand, Italy, and beyond. Even though Yeandle’s wife is the person wearing the masks, she’s embodying a make-believe character, drawn from the artist’s own personal book of folklore. She belongs to the ancient past, the distant future, and the here and now. “In a way, though, these are also self-portraits, as I was portraying my emotions and feelings within these ambiguous representations,” he admits. We asked him more about the project.

The essential gear of Aaron Yeandle

Canon 5D Mark II

Elinchrom D-Lite RX4 studio flash kit

Yeandle tells us,

“I usually use several camera bodies, lenses, studio lights, and modifiers, but to create the PPE-19 project, I was limited to my Canon 5D Mark II and my Elinchrom D-Lite RX4 studio flash kit. This was because most of my photographic equipment was in my studio, and I was unable to access it because of the lockdown. With that being said, I always use flash for all of my work. This is because it produces the style and the appearance I look for within my photographs. Using portable studio flash equipment is very important to me, as it allows me to have continuity with my work and gives me studio-quality lighting on location.”

Phoblographer: How did you first get started as an artist, and what drew you to photography, in particular?

Aaron Yeandle: As a child, I was always interested in the arts and the world around me. I used art as a form of escapism. As an adult, I felt a deep need to express myself through art and to be creative as part of my everyday life. I was drawn to photography as a creative medium, as it allowed me to see the world through the lens and capture fleeting moments in time. The camera gave me the opportunity to see my everyday environments in a new and enlightening way.

I first started photography when I enlisted on an evening course. I enjoyed this course so much that the following year, I left my job to start a full-time BTEC National Diploma in photography at my local College. Finally, I felt I had found something which really filled my creative vacuum. I then spent the next few years completing a BA (Hons) in Photo...