As a recent college graduate, my quarantine experience with the spread of COVID-19 involved a harsh realization of my lasts. The adjustment to life back in my childhood home was hard. Time became irrelevant and my previous life drifted away. The goodbyes the Class of 2020 had planned for; graduation, the final farewells to classmates in May, all had slipped away. This was a time I had waited for all of my life, the time where I found my career after college. I became mentally unstable with the rejection letters and discouraged feelings that I would never find a job in this economy. With a weakened immune system and various health issues, I needed to stay within my home. I felt my mental health deteriorating and the walls in my house were constantly closing in, contributing to my claustrophobia. To exemplify these feelings of entrapment, I utilized direct light to bring attention to my interpretation of everyday life. I realized that previously simple actions and feelings became incredibly substantial. The combination of black and white and contrasted light does not only encase each feeling and story, but references the historical, colorless nature of the time our generation is living in.

Katina Zentz, the photographer, poses for a self-portrait in the sunroom within her home in Dubuque, Iowa. This room used to be the room with the most light and space. Within the last couple of years, the room has become a storage unit within the home for all of my previous things. With my return home and leaving my college town, many of my clothes, plants, and apartment materials have had to find their place in the sunroom. This was once a room that I spent the most time in. It has now become the room that contributes the most to my claustrophobia. (Katina Zentz)