Men in Masks: Back to Business

BY RIMNA RASHEED

No business could say they were 100% prepared for the toll that the Covid-19 pandemic launched on the workforce and economy. We all know we will come out of this eventually, but it’s hard to predict when and how things will shift after such a crisis.

We’ve seen the devastating effect of the pandemic — how it threw a lot of families into chaos. In the last 18 months, media and social media had been filled with stories of horror with government and scientists scrambling to find both medicines and vaccines to save people. We saw countries shut down, we saw invisible walls built, we saw the stoppage of flights and traffics and locally, we witnessed our own version of purgatory being asked to stay home in order to save lives.

We saw the closure of schools and government institutions, the mass exodus of expats who lost their jobs, the suffering of frontliners and first responders and thanks to the collective effort of many relevant institutions, it felt like the nightmare is finally ending after a long time.

I wanted to share my version of stories of small businesses and their resilience amid Covid-19 through images that speak. What better than a photograph that will touch human emotions and make them forever documented. This inspired me to go around with my camera and click these simple lives that were impacted by the clasps of the global pandemic. For me, each of them is a survivor and thankfully, many of them fought a good battle and won to this day.

More than 100 plus subjects have been clicked as a part of this self-photo documentary project. All of these were clicked in the various months of 2021 starting from February 2021 compiling various men and women at work with their masks on fighting the risks associated with their daily activities.

Some of the clicks were from my everyday movements, but most of the clicks were from the many conscious visits I made to Al Seeb and Muttrah souq which are major commercial hubs that bustle with activity and attract good footfall all around the year.

Being a street photographer, I always try to interact with my photography subjects as I believe the best portraits are a result of an emotional frequency match between the photographer and the one being clicked.

If the subject is hesitant, I never go ahead with the shot. But almost all the people I approach are very cooperative and do not mind being shot, especially the sellers at Muttrah and Seeb Souq who are very used to being clicked by tourists who visit Oman at different times of the year.

As I went through with this project, I had many realisations but the ultimate lesson is learned by these very men and women who relied on being out and about for their day to day living. Just like them, this pandemic taught us many lessons.

One of them is that future planning is now seen as a more vital tool. If this pandemic wrecked certain businesses, the present is the best time to start planning for the future. Using future thinking is all about finding how work would change in various economic and natural disasters and what would it take for businesses to stay afloat during tough times.

And second, hard work does pay off. There are several obstacles that we’ve all encountered running our businesses in this new climate just by staying calm and working hard. The thing to remember is that resilience will shine through in the end. After all, a business faces its greatest failures by giving in to the difficulties and being unwilling to change.