This is the fourth installment in a continuing project in which WIRED’s photo editors speak with photographers about their experiences during Covid-19 self-isolation. The following interview has been edited for clarity.
By the time New Jersey governor Phil Murphy ordered residents to stay at home due to Covid-19, photographer Robin Schwartz was already seven months ahead of him. Due to a cancer treatment that left her ill, she had been sheltering in place since July of 2019.
Schwartz lives in a converted firehouse in Hoboken, New Jersey, with husband and artist Robert Forman, her daughter Amelia Forman, her cat Hannah, and her dog Indie. Her daughter and animal companions—as well as animals not her own—are consistent subjects of Schwartz’s work. A 2016 Guggenheim fellow, Schwartz’s photography is exhibited widely and held in museum collections the world over, including those of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City; the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC; Paris’ Bibliothéque Nationale, and the National Museum of Photography in Copenhagen.
“I was born an animal person,” Schwartz