Shortly before the order to shelter in place was issued in New York City, photographer Bella Newman was in her second-to-last semester at New York University’s filmmaking program. In the middle of March, right as circumstances in the city started to escalate, she packed up her things to go into lockdown with her extended family and two friends in her suburban Central Pennsylvania home. She’s currently working on a feature film for one of her classes, which are now taking place remotely, and being home has actually helped her get back into the spirit of this project. “The script I’m writing is kind of based off of my high school years, so it’s nice being back there for that for inspiration,” she says the 21-year-old photographer.
Aside from this script, Newman’s been working on a photo series that bears a similar nostalgic influence. Newman typically shoots on film, but for this self-isolation photo diary that she’s now shared with Vogue.com, she’s been using her dad’s old digital camera. “Every picture I have of myself as a child was taken with this camera,” she says. “I’ve been in quarantine trying to be creative and compile all of these strange things that give expression to my inner child,” says Newman of her photo diary, which she admits has a sort of pastoral, “cursed image” sort of vibe. “I’ve been feeling kind of nostalgic and going back to this childlike freedom of not having any responsibility and not having anything to really do.”
Her provincial surroundings have compelled to take a more resourceful, arts and crafts approach, building off of the lovesick collages that she shared from her journal for Vogue.com’s Love Stories series at the beginning of the year. The photographer also recently taught herself how to crochet, and she’s been sewing little dresses for the six rabbits her family recently acquired too. For the purposes of the photographs, she’s excavated beloved objects from her childhood to create eerie new settings. She’s pulled out her old Calico Critters and carefully arranged them outside of old dollhouses, and she’s placed her younger cousin in the middle of a mountain of Beanie Babies of all sizes.
The baby pink, lace-lined Gunne Sax dress that she poses in while her little cousin holds up a tie-dyed teddy bear isn’t something that she found from the dark depths of her closet, though. That frock was a spontaneous eBay purchase that Newman ordered just because she wanted to take a picture in it. “I looked up Civil War ball gown on eBay, but I didn’t look at the size when I bought it,” she says. “It’s huge.”
