Powerful new project highlights Americans who have beaten COVID-19
ATLANTA - Niya Brown Matthews loves her Atlanta, her hometown.
So when a photographer asked the author and life coach where she wanted to be photographed for a project highlighting coronavirus survivors, Brown Matthews knew the answer immediately.
"I said the Jackson Street Bridge, that's my all-time favorite," she says. "Everybody knows that bridge in Atlanta, and prior to COVID, I would go for my walks every day on that bridge."
Niya Brown Matthews of Atlanta is featured in the COVID-19 Survivor Diaries.
In her photograph, featured on the website www.coronavirussurvivordiaries.com, Brown Matthews leans against the bridge railing, with the city she loves spread out behind her.
"It meant something to me to say, 'I'm still here, still standing, and I'm in the great city of Atlanta, and we are resilient," she says.
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Like her hometown's symbol, the mythical phoenix, Brown Matthews feels like she, too, has risen from the ashes in her case of COVID-19.
New York photographer Morgana Wingard has interviewed and photographed more than 80 coronavirus survivors around the country.
"It was the scariest moment of my life," she says. "I am a breast cancer survivor, twice. So I know what to expect with breast cancer. COVID was something totally different; it was new at that time."
Matthews is now sharing her story as part of a photography project known as the COVID-19 Survivor Diaries.
Julia Reynolds, a mother of two young daughters from the Atlanta area, is featured in the COVID-19 Survivor Diaries.
"A lot of these people, they've never gone public before, and this is the first time they're actually sharing their story," says photographer Morgana Wingard, the creator of the project.
Since April, Wingard, her husband Jaco, and their cat "Togo" have been traveling the U.S., documenting the stories of coronavirus survivors.
Morgana Wingard, creator of the COVID-19 Survivor Diaries, with her husband Jaco and their cat Togo, who travels with them.
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This is the second health crisis Wingard, who lives in Brooklyn, has covered.
She was in Liberia, West Africa in 2014 during a major Ebola virus outbreak, capturing images of survivors there.
When the novel coronavirus hit New York hard, she picked up her camera again and began seeking out survivors.
"A lot of times, people focus on the negative,” Wingard explains. “They focus on the deaths because there is a bit of a shock and awe to that. But the survivors give us hope."
Dr. Joseph Feuerstein, a COVID-19 survivor, shared his story on the COVID-19 Survivor Diaries website.
And, hope was hard to come by when Niya Brown Matthews got sick with the virus back in March.
She thinks she contracted the virus while grocery shopping in Atlanta.
Everything she had seen on the news was bleak.
"All I kept seeing was people were dying of COVID," she remembers. "There were no survivors."
Her symptoms began with an upset stomach, then fatigue, then, a few days later, shortness of breath.
Rushed by her husband Eric and her daughter to an Atlanta hospital, struggling to breathe, she says, she passed out in the waiting room.
"When I woke up, I was already on oxygen, and I had tubes everywhere," Brown Matthews says. "It was one of the most scariest feelings ever. My kidneys started shutting down, renal failure. I'm talking about blood clots."
But, somehow, she pulled through, and went home from the hospital after five days on the COVID-19 floor, sharing her story on her Instagram feed.
Not everyone felt good about going public with their ordeal.
"I was getting a lot of inbox messages from people not willing to share it," Brown Matthews says. "They felt it was a dirty secret. I'm like, 'You've made it on the other side of this, so tell your story! Tell your testimony!'"
That's what Wingard is trying to capture.
Tiffany Pinckney, 39, a coronavirus survivor, is profiled in the COVID-19 Survivor Diaries.
She has photographed and interview more than 80 survivors from all walks of life, focusing on a story sometimes overlooked in this pandemic: what it's like to beat this virus.
"They see these small miracles that are just incredible," Wingard says. "They've made me cry many times with their bravery, but also their hope, and their encouragement, to just keep going."
It's become a labor of love.
"Both my husband and I lost our jobs because of COVID, which is a bit of blessing and a curse," Wingard says. "The blessing is that it gives us the time to do this. We've been self-funding it for the past five months."
Wingard is now trying to raise funding to keep the project going.
BOSTON, MA: Covid-19 survivor Lauren Nichols. Photo by Morgana Wingard
She says there are so many more survivor stories that need to be told.
"They show us what they've been through, but they also show us we can get through it," she says.
In the end, maybe it’s not just about getting through it.
Maybe, it’s about thriving in the middle of storm just like Niya Brown Matthews.
Posing, up on the Jackson Street Bridge, she thought about how far she has come, and how resilient her body is.
Just like the phoenix, rising up, despite it all.
"Breast cancer tried it, and COVID tried it, but I'm still here," she smiles. "I've still got a message, and I'm going to keep fighting."
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