Melissa Lyttle is an independent visual journalist based in Washington, D.C.
I can count about a dozen friends, all of them photographers, who’ve either tested positive for COVID-19 or had symptoms but were unable to get a test. Several have been in quarantine for weeks. I have friends who have colleagues who’ve been in the hospital hooked to ventilators. And on Easter Sunday, the photo world learned about the death of one of our own — New York Post photographer Anthony Causi, a 25-year veteran of the paper, and one hell of a sports shooter.
A few weeks ago, I got an email from someone (who wishes to remain anonymous) at an organization I’ve worked with in the past, asking if the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) would have any use for face masks. She and some friends chipped in and ordered as many as possible from a manufacturer in China. She wanted to get them into the hands of visual journalists covering the coronavirus pandemic.
“YES! Let’s do this! Photographers need this more than ever,” I was screaming on the inside. “Sure, I can figure out how to get them out to people,” I replied.
A few days later, a box of 1,000 masks showed up on my front porch.
I created an online form to allow people to request masks. Moments after posting the link on Twitter and Facebook, hundreds of applications started coming in.
I spent a few days addressing and stuffing every envelope, mailer, and small box I could find in my house. On my first trip to the post office, I sent out 325 masks to more than 30 people. A few days later, after asking Twitter for help finding more envelopes, I packed up every single mask I had. As I write this, there are 69 more packages, and an additional 675 masks now on their way to photographers who can really use them. All 1,000 have been given away. That trip also left me with a receipt twice as long as I am.
I had anticipated that most of the masks would go to freelancers who would have to equip themselves — and many did. But I was unprepared for the deluge of requests from staff photographers at small and mid-sized publications who said their employers had essentially left them to fend for themselves.
A photographer at a small paper in the Midwest said she’d been using a makeshift cloth mask that doesn’t fit very well. The PPE she and her colleagues were promised hadn’t arrived.
Another staff photographer in Michigan told me that his newspaper hadn’t been able to buy protective gear, and many of the other photographers on staff had struggled to find their own. “These will help protect us, but more importantly they’ll protect the people we photograph and show them that we’re serious about their safety,” he wrote.
Photographers, unlike many writers, have to be out there to tell the story. And many are now trying hard to unlearn years of having Robert Capa’s famous maxim drilled into their heads: “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough.”
Unfortunately, many photographers are unequipped, and some employers are underprepared.
What all of the requests showed me is that hundreds of photographers are ready and willing to put their lives and their health on the line to cover their communities. I’m just thankful that a generous donor stepped in to help them do it safely and smartly.
Melissa Lyttle is an independent visual journalist, former president of the National Press Photographers Association, founder of APhotoADay, member of Women Photograph, and a fairly prolific Tweeter.