Covid: Cornish lockdown portrait project shows 'moment in time'

Father Jeff Risbridger said he found lockdown "particularly difficult" due to his job usually being spent alongside others

A series of photographs showing people coping with the coronavirus lockdowns has gone on display in Cornwall.

Photographer Annie Bungeroth's Unfamiliar Distance exhibition shows people from St Hilary, Goldsithney and Rosudgeon in 2020 and 2021.

Ms Bungeroth said the exhibition name referred to the strict Covid protocols that herself and her subjects had to adhere to during the project.

Most of the shots were taken from far away, or through windows and screens.

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She said: "It's a moment in time. It's a record of something quite fleeting but quite monumental, a moment that might be easy to forget and it just seems so important not to forget it."

Father Jeff Risbridger said the first time Ms Bungeroth photographed him was through an open window from outside into the house.

Father Jeff Risbridger said lockdown now felt "a lifetime away"

"It felt a bit strange. It felt a bit like she was a peeping Tom, really; kind of poking her head through the window," he said.

"It didn't feel quite the same way when we were here in church because it's a more public space, really.

"It's very strange looking at the exhibition now because it's hard to think that it was actually only three years ago, because it feels like a lifetime away."

• Listen to a BBC Radio Cornwall interview with photographer Annie Bungeroth

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Ms Bungeroth said The Stores in Goldsithney was an "essential" part of village life during that time and many people her told her to photograph the shopkeeper.

Joanne Bolglase said: "It's good to be part of something that's joyful ... it's finding the positive.

"The first few weeks we were everything to everybody, I think."

Shopkeeper Joanne Bolglase said she spent lockdown "looking out on the world from behind a screen"

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Ms Bungeroth said every photo you take is "like a little mini relationship".

"It just feels like an amazing privilege and I'm so happy to have been able to do this project and to have met all the people that I met through it," she said.

The exhibition, at St Hilary's Church, is on until 15 August.