BBC News Special

The first lockdown during the COVID -19 pandemic in the UK began on the 24th March 2020. From this day forward for a period of 72 days the Government gave daily updates on the progress of the pandemic in a series of television programmes entitled BBC News Special. I took a screen shot from every programme.

The screen shots were cropped and reduced to black and white, low resolution, talking-head portraits. The portraits represent these low resolution images not the individuals depicted, i.e., no attention was given to whether or not the paintings captured likenesses, instead the focus was placed on the correspondence between image and painting.

I started with the government minister , Matt Hancock, fronting first the press conference. As he also also fronted the subsequent conference and selected a scientific advisor, Patrick Valance and proceeded in this manner, always seeking to capture a new face. If a press conference comprised new faces, I gave priority to the minister present. As for Redactions 5, the exposition format of BBC News Special is not fixed.