Barb with Katie

An smiling elderly woman holds an old dog on a leash next to the driveway of a white home with a front porch.

Kremena: Barb has been my neighbor for all but one of the years I’ve lived in Lexington. Even before we bought our house on Bassett Avenue, we had heard about Barb, a woman with a heart so big, she looked right past the spitefulness of a man who lived by himself and needed eye drops put into his eyes. She did that for him every morning until the day he died.

Over the 15 years we’ve lived two doors down from Barb, she has offered our kids more Mint Oreo cookies I can count, loaned us various power tools, and built us a front-porch swing. She looks after everyone (and we look after her, hoping she won’t notice).

Barb will soon turn 87. She is one of the reasons we practice social distancing. Because we love Barb and we know that, like her, everyone is someone’s neighbor, someone’s friend.

Audio Transcript

My name is Barbara Call. I lived in Lexington for 45 years. The America I want to live in a land where where everyone is equal, has a chance, and where everything is fair. That fairness is important to me. That fairness and equality is so important to me and when you see kids in poverty who don’t have a chance, it’s heartbreaking and so sad.

Lexington in the Time of COVID-19 is an artwork about people practicing social distancing at a time of a deadly virus. And also offering kindness.

Kurt Gohde and Kremena Todorova capture photographs at the periphery of American culture, where drag queens, discarded couches, and abandoned motel signs exist.