Over lockdown, as a reaction to digital daytimes on endless zoom calls, I spent my evenings in analog escape – with mid 20th century technology such as valve (vacuum tube) amplifiers, loudspeakers, and black and white analog photograpy.
At the end of 2024 I found myself fascinated by the shadows of Covid around my neighbourhood. But nobody talks about Covid. And so Covert-24 was born – a project that uses a Minox B spy camera to discreetly photograph the things about which we don’t speak.
Meaningful projects like this got us through lockdown and continue to sustain us. Any proceeds of Covert-24 will be donated to the Scottish Men’s Sheds Association who encourage such projects.
Covert-24 is dedicated to my father – who sadly didn’t make it through the pandemic, but whose hobbies of astronomy and photography were an inspiration to me.
All black and white photographs were taken with a 1966 Minox B spy camera with a 15mm f3.5 complan lens, using Ilford HP5 film cut to 8x11mm format, which was processed using Ilford ID11 at 400 ISO. Images were hand-printed onto Ilford Multigrade paper at 5×7 inches using a Meopta enlarger with a Phago 35mm f3.5 half-frame enlarger lens, and scanned with an Epson V370 scanner.