The Isolation Project

About The Project

On March 16th 2020, five members of the MAP6 collective flew to Finland to photograph the area around Rovaniemi in Lapland. The coronavirus was beginning to take hold across the world; it had been ranked as a pandemic by the World Health Organization on March 11th, and its impact was only just beginning to be realised. Within hours of arriving they were notified that all return flights had been cancelled. With the country entering a state of emergency and the borders closed, the MAP6 members were potentially stranded. Events escalated as they watched alarming news updates from their apartment. Museums and schools had closed in Rovaniemi, and restaurants and bars were shutting. As a spontaneous reaction to their circumstances, for four days the MAP6 photographers documented their time in Finland during the crisis, whilst awaiting confirmation of a flight home.

These images have been sequenced with headlines that appeared on various social media channels during that time.