With much of the U.S. in a state of lockdown, we asked photographers to create a diary that shows how they experience isolation. The moments they captured show us the things that bind. https://nyti.ms/2Kk9hAA 

To find joy in the gray weeks of early April in Rockport, Maine, Cig Harvey brought spring greenery indoors, “Enlisting an army of flowers around me.”

“Planting seeds is like living with your fingers crossed, an act of hope,” she writes. https://nyti.ms/2KotJAg 

In New Orleans, @ek_the_pj is processing how to isolate at her home months after her house was robbed.

“Originally I worried that my greatest struggle in quarantine would be being alone in my house. Turns out that my greatest fear is that for a few moments, I might not be.”

“The night an ambulance took my neighbor away was a dream or a remembrance that went on and on,” @richardseugene writes from New York. As it drove away, he turned the camera toward himself, “an old man sitting alone in the window as the street grew dark again.”

“My greatest fear in all of this is bringing the virus home to Pete, or someone else I love,” said @alexkpotter, a photographer and emergency nurse in Providence, Rhode Island. “So for now, we wait in the quiet for what is yet to come.” https://nyti.ms/2KotJAg 

“I’ve never felt so alive,” Damon Winter’s son told him after they built a small sailboat together at a lake in central New York. Those simple words were enough to melt away Damon’s fear and anxiety, at least for a few hours. https://nyti.ms/2KotJAg 

“I wanted to take these photos to make meaning of this situation, and to share the experience of our multigenerational, queer family,” @AngelaSnappy writes about the time spent with her pregnant wife, aging mother-in-law and toddler in Minneapolis. https://nyti.ms/2KotJAg 

“This corona-enforced solitude and quarantine has given me the time to observe the beauty and magic that occurs on a daily basis in my imagined garden and in the real garden just outside my door,” Maggie Steber writes from Miami. https://nyti.ms/2KotJAg 

“I doubt our 15-month-old daughter notices much difference in her daily life except that her dad is around more,” @joshhaner writes from his home in San Francisco. https://nyti.ms/2KotJAg 

Michelle V. Agins drove 7 hours from Brooklyn to her friend Florence Patterson’s 100-acre farm near the Canadian border. “It felt like another world: No car alarms or workmen, but plenty of beavers, gophers, deer and wild turkey.” https://nyti.ms/2KotJAg 

“Over dinner, I told my family that I loved them now more than ever. My wife is amazing and without her every day would feel like bad weather,” writes @visionsandverbs, who is with his pregnant wife and 2 children in New Orleans. https://nyti.ms/2KotJAg 

When Brittainy Newman had mild Covid-19 symptoms, her mother had to fight the instinct to be close in their shared New York apartment.

“Isolation is hard. We are wired for connection.” https://nyti.ms/2KotJAg 

“Home is also a state of mind, representing ease and safety,” @rfremson writes from Washington State. “Life feels bizarre but I’m trying to dig deep, get what I can from this altered state, and treat it as a reboot.” https://nyti.ms/2KotJAg 

Todd Heisler is at home in New York with his 7-year-old son. @heislerphoto writes, “I think about something I read. That kids won’t remember much about what they did during this time, only how they felt.” https://nyti.ms/2KotJAg 

“As parents, the emotional health of our child is paramount,” @IdrisSolomon writes from New York. “His innocence is something we want to preserve. That has been our motivation to make this situation as calm and healthy as possible.” https://nyti.ms/2KotJAg 

Before the lockdown, @TamirKalifa planned to celebrate Passover with his family in Israel, but instead is home in Austin. “For now, I’m holding on to how grateful I am to be healthy, to have a home in which to be lonely and to have noticed the cardinal in my backyard.”

"In this unnatural state of isolation, these are the things that bind," @DanBarryNYT writes.

See the full diary of images captured by photographers as “March vanished into April.” https://nyti.ms/2KotJAg