Curator Anne Kelly's review:
"Many of us spent at least the first few months of the pandemic at home  — perhaps only emerging to buy groceries. Meanwhile, others continued to leave the safety of their home daily to work in businesses that were deemed essential.  

Eric Cousineau is a photographer and an essential worker.  In this ongoing project, Eric is making atmospheric black & white portraits of other essential workers, from grocery stores to hospitals.   The photograph that I selected for 1st place is a portrait of Francisco, a meat department associate at a small local Latin American grocery store in Santa Fe, NM.

This ongoing project is a collaboration with Center" https://visitcenter.org/ 

Anne Kelly asks, "This is not your first series of black and white portraits. What did you learn when shooting past portrait based projects that may have helped inform "essential workers"?"
 
They would ask me what I wanted them to do, and at that time I really didn't have much experience taking portraits other than of people I already knew. I ended up telling them to pretend that their photo was going on the cover of Time magazine and pose how they would want the world to see them. I would let them figure it out, and when they told me they were ready I would take the photo. 

That was the last time I took black and white portraits until the summer of 2019. At that time I wasn't in a great spot mentally, I was becoming more introverted than I was already, and I was isolating and just feeling really alone. So I decided to force myself to start taking portraits of coworkers, friends, and people I only knew from facebook. I just went through my friends list and if they lived in the Santa Fe area and wanted their portrait taken we'd set up a date and time.

I'd bring my camera and strobe over to their house, set up and photograph. There were some days I did 6-8 different portrait sessions, I did about 100 portrait sessions in a six month period. 

So yes these two other series definitely helped me with the Essential Worker series, especially the latter. That portrait series more or less helped me get out of my shell, because I'm an extremely shy person. I love taking portraits, but I have a difficult time talking to random people.

I can't take full credit for the idea of the Essential Worker project, but because of the second portrait project I was approached by Center, based in Santa Fe, NM to see if I was interested in being commissioned to photograph this idea they had honoring frontline workers.

Without hesitation I said yes, and the project has evolved from there."

Anne asks, "You are an “essential worker” - do you view any of these images as self portraits?  If so why or why not."
 
Eric says, "That's a good question that I have never thought about. Being an essential worker myself I feel more connected with the people I'm photographing no matter what their profession. Once I tell them I work at Trader Joe's I feel there is an unsaid bond between myself and the person I'm photographing.

We are both grateful to still have a job, but we both know what it's like to deal with customers that don't want to follow the mandates put in place. What it feels like to wish you could stay home and not worry on a daily basis you might get a virus that you don't know how it's going to affect you. So yes, now that I think about it, I do see a little myself in them, in the moment I'm taking the photograph."

Anne asks, "What limitations did you face when making this work?  

Eric says, "Time is the biggest limitation. I'm a single dad with two kids at home doing remote learning, and I work full time. So the spare time I have to work on this project is very limited.

Because of my limited time to photograph, I find locally owned businesses easier to get permission to photograph in, corporate owned businesses are a little bit harder. Sometimes the store manager will give me the go ahead, but most of the time they tell me they'll have to call corporate to see what they say, I hand them my business card and never hear from them again. In the beginning I used to follow up to see if I could come photograph, one business in particular, corporate gave me permission but left it up to the store manager for the final say. The manager did say yes, but everytime I contacted her she would say she would get back to me about a date and time I could come photograph. She never got back to me, I got tired of following up so I moved on. Getting permission to photograph in Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center took a long time, it was about five months before they said it was okay for me to enter the hospital to photograph. 

Recently I have decided to take a bunch of time off of work, (and when I don't have my kids) to work on this project for the next two months. I plan on going to as many small towns and villages to photograph essential workers and see how people in very rural areas in New Mexico are making it through this pandemic."

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