Alex Yates
Creative Director
Son Nguyen
Photographer
Bui Vu
Model
The Emotional Consequences of Lockdown
“Day 1000” is a photoshoot that examines the emotional consequences caused by wave after wave of lockdowns, quarantine and remote work. There is significant scientific literature on the mental health risks associated with extended isolation. The American Psychological Association notes that loneliness and social isolation can be twice as harmful to physical and mental health as obesity. But here in Vietnam, the subject remains poorly studied, and mental health resources are still limited.
It’s a problem that pre-dates the COVID-19 pandemic. The suicide mortality rate for men in Vietnam has been increasing since the year 2000, and national figures are still not available to account for what effect the lockdowns may have had. Nearly two years before the pandemic began, Fourdozen partner UNICEF noted the urgent need to improve access to mental health services for young people in rural Vietnam. These existing problems have now been compounded by Vietnam’s worst wave of infections since the pandemic began, lockdowns across the country, and widespread financial hardship for citizens who find themselves out of work.

This is the world we found ourselves in when Fourdozen planned and conducted this photoshoot. Our intention here was to be unflinchingly honest, and to tell an emotionally true story about the pain that isolation can cause. The way daily activities become joyless chores, and that numb sense of dislocation and disconnection. At the same time, the photoshoot does not dwell only on pain. Because isolation is, paradoxically, a shared experience. So many of us, and so many of our friends and neighbours in Vietnam are going through the same thing. The message of “Day 1000” is that, even in our loneliness, we are not alone.




