Remote Learning

In Visual Art by Rocco Rorandelli

According to UNESCO, by the end of March 2020, nearly 1.5 billion children around the world were at home due to the COVID-19 lockdowns. For students and their parents, remote learning is a new challenge. For schools, it is time to experiment with new forms of teaching.

For the project I contacted parents around the world to let me enter their homes during the daily routine of their children’s study, and during a video call I photographed my phone. What I collected is a series of family snapshots, of the reclamation of a space now used for school, of interactions with family members, but also of solitude. Visually, images are blurry and unsharp, the distance from the subject is measured also with a loss in quality. For me, this is a parallel with remote learning, which is channeled through devices. Scholars state that home learning is effective if students have the technical means and the support of the family. When these are missing, the risk of dropping out of school is high.

The work is part of a collective project that TerraProject is pursuing to explore the relationship between digital technologies used by people during the Covid-19 epidemic.

  • New York, USA. Aliana siede accante al padre il primo giorno di remote schooling. Nell’appartamento dove vive con la madre ed il padre, la tavola per la colazione è stata trasformata nella postazione fissa di lavoro e scuola.
About the Author

Rocco Rorandelli

Rocco Rorandelli (Italy, 1973) started working as a documentary photographer after his doctoral studies in Natural Sciences, which helped him develop a profound interest in global social and environmental issues. His images are utilized in awareness campaigns of intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations (WHO, Oxfam, Save the Children, MSF, etc), and are regularly published by the main international magazines, such as Le Monde Magazine, GEO, Der Spiegel, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, Paris Match, Guardian Review, D di Repubblica, L'Espresso, Internazionale, Io Donna, Vanity Fair, Sportweek, Monocle, IL, and others. In 2011 he has been awarded a grant by the Fund for Investigative Journalism for his long-term project on the tobacco industry, published as a book with the title Bitter Leaves (GOST Books, 2019). Rocco is based in Rome. He is one of the founding members of the collective TerraProject.