Alone Together

Leah Hennel’s photographs hit the pandemic’s emotional heart.

by

Hospitals are extraordinary places – one of the few public spaces where we can witness intensely private moments in the lives of strangers. Normally, we try not to intrude, turning our gazes and catching only blurry snippets of open-hearted or trauma-filled dramas. 

Yet, it’s such intimate scenes that Leah Hennel, a former photojournalist who became a staff photographer for Alberta Health Services, brings into razor-sharp focus. Her book, Alone Together: A Pandemic Photo Essay, is a keyhole into the personal stories behind the COVID-19 headlines. 

Hennel’s camera captures moments her subjects, such as intensive care physician Simon Demers-Marcil, may never forget. He is pictured at a hospital desk speaking on the phone. His bowed head rests in his hands. This poignant gesture arrests my eye, but on second glance I notice a chair has been pushed aside and he is kneeling on the hospital floor as if in prayer. The caption explains he is calling the family of a COVID-19 patient to tell them their loved one has died.

At times, Hennel’s lens zooms within inches of a scene. COVID-19 patient Chuck Dover’s hand rests on his bed in the intensive care unit of Calgary’s Peter Lougheed Centre. His wife of 52 years, Dixie, touches him reassuringly through a protective glove. It was one of their last moments together before he succumbed to an aggressive infection. In a later photo, taken in their home, Dixie cradles an urn. “Evenings are the worst,” she says. “I reach over and he is not there. It’s hard. It’s very hard.” 

Amidst the sorrow there are joyful, even exuberant, scenes. As Hennel aptly illustrates, the pandemic brought out a spectrum of emotional extremes. In one of her outdoor shots depicting Calgarians’ response to the pandemic, students from Mount Royal University celebrate their graduation at a drive-in ceremony. A young woman pops through the sunroof of a car to make a victory sign. Her outstretched arms cut a white silhouette against the night like the wings of a bird taking flight. 

Many of Hennel’s portraits show the resilience of the human spirit is not mere platitude. Her photo of Kelly Cook, diagnosed with cancer in 2019 and forced to go through chemotherapy in isolation, is among them. The sun streams in as Cook gazes out her window, making her features seem as chiseled as a granite sculpture. She looks resolute, but there’s a hint of humour in her Mona Lisa smile. As Cook explains in the accompanying caption, there is joy to be found in her dog, her friends, the fresh air and “laughing at the absurdity of everything.” 

Flipping through this book, you might think Hennel was a fly on the wall observing people’s personal dramas. Most images seem entirely unstaged. I was surprised to read that she collaborated with her subjects. That makes the authenticity all the more remarkable: the moments Hennel documents are so emotional they leave little room for posing. 

While nothing in this photo essay indicates a political agenda, its very existence raises questions. Why were such shots almost non-existent during the early days of the pandemic? As virulent anti-vax and conspiracy theories took hold, such images would have been more convincing than words. 

It’s hardly surprising the Trump administration’s policy of downplaying COVID-19 saw onerous rules that made pandemic documentation in American hospitals almost impossible. But, for other reasons, the situation was little better in Canada. Health authorities regularly denied access to journalists, often citing privacy concerns, and many gave up trying to cover the kind of stories that Hennel documented.

This is a deeply valuable book. I only wish Hennel’s photographs had been released earlier. Perhaps more lives could have been saved. ■

Leah Hennel, Alone Together: A Pandemic Photo Essay, 2022, Rocky Mountain Books. 

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