Hannah Grace Deller works as a paediatric matron at St Mary’s hospital in Paddington, central London. She is also a trained photographer, and during the Covid crisis she began to photograph the conditions in which she and her nursing colleagues were working. Some of her images were published widely and exhibited at the time, earning praise from Grayson Perry, Martin Parr and others, and inspiring an album by Chris Difford, of Squeeze.
She has now published a book, Working on the Frontline, documenting the experiences of nurses and the reaction of the public during the crisis and since.
Before the pandemic, I had never really taken photographs at work – just a few snaps if someone was leaving to say goodbye, that kind of thing. I had never really looked at my job in that way at all. Work was work, and my camera came out when I left the hospital as my way to relax. It’s like a form of meditation for me.
Then one day at the start of the pandemic, I was responding to a bleep when I saw a cleaner, in full PPE, trapped behind a door, and asked to take his picture. After that I thought, something is beginning here. We didn’t know how long it would last, I thought maybe a month. But, with permission from my colleagues, I thought I would document what was happening. I didn’t bring in a camera, that wouldn’t have been appropriate; I’d just take pictures on my phone and use my real camera outside work to document everything else.
This was around the time that people were clapping for NHS workers, and that was sweet – though most nurses didn’t get out of work before 8pm to hear it. As time went on, I think lots of nurses began to wonder how much that goodwill was worth.
Nurses started protesting about pay and recognition during the pandemic. At one fair pay protest I started chatting with a nurse who said: “I’ve had enough, I’m going”. We’d had a pay offer of 1% and she said: “Surely, after everything, we are worth more than 1%.”
I’ve always had an interest in photographing protests. It’s that spirit that you see in people, regardless of whether I agree with what they are protesting about. But with the nursing protests, it felt a bit different.
I began talking to other nurses on the protests, from all different hospitals, who had had enough. One of the people I spoke to was Camille, who is French but had lived in Britain for ever. With Brexit and then the pandemic, it was like a double insult to her, and she told me she was leaving nursing completely.
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Nurse Camille moved to France post-Covid. She said: ‘What with Brexit, Covid and the lack of appreciation in the UK for nurses from the government, I’m done.’ She now runs an Airbnb in France with her wife and son.
We arranged that after taking her picture I would take her uniforms back as she had moved out of London, but when I got to her house, she had decided to burn them; she said it felt really therapeutic. There is a lot of trauma that can be held in clothing. A lot of the stains you just can’t get out of the uniforms, no matter how hot you wash them. As she was turning them she said: “There’s a lot of blood, sweat and tears in that fire.”
Nurse Natasha left after the pandemic because of burnout and disappointment around the pay dispute with the government. She decided to travel with her husband. She washed her uniforms and hung them on the line as if for the last time. Natasha used to play her instrument to the Covid patients and sometimes when someone was dying she would play music on the ward.
There was also Mila – she wrote “RIP nursing” on the back of her dress. She now works on Portobello Road, in London, selling jewellery.
Ellie also worked through the pandemic but had had enough; I took a few pictures of her handing her nursing uniform back. She was in her 20s and she said: “I’m just too young to experience this, so much death and upset. I just want to go to Australia and lie on the beach.” There are so many untold stories like this.
There is an image of nurses in which we are expected to be submissive and sweet, never raising our voices, just getting on with the job. We are not supposed to get angry, to speak up. But there is a lot of anger in these photographs.
Of course I feel that way too sometimes, but if I’m ever upset, or feel that I want to leave, I’ll often just go round and chat to the patients on the ward. And then I’ll remember, ah, that’s why I’m here.
Hannah Grace Deller was speaking to Esther Addley
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Working on the Front Line is published by Image and Reality, and can be ordered through Kickstarter.
