“Corona Rhapsody” is a contribution to the discussion on the question of what has changed in our society since the pandemic. The photographer Rafael Heygster has captured various scenes of public life and diverse social situations.
By Rafael Heygster
Like Freddy Mercury asks in Bohemian Rhapsody: “Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?”, I have often been confronted with the questions of what is actually happening around us and where the border between fantasy and reality lies, since the outbreak of the pandemic. I am interested in the tension between public life, the apparatus behind it and the people who move in this space.
Some images focus on the sense of surreality in the first weeks of the pandemic and have been photographed in collaboration with Helena Lea Mahartsberger (first photo from 27.04.2020, Hanover). In the second phase, the images documents life during the acclimatisation to the state of emergency as well as the decline of the pandemic and the resulting normalisation of everyday life, questioning whether there is a possibillity to “return” to old normality at all, or whether the impact of the pandemic has caused lasting changes in our society.
