Free Fall is a new personal series by Tom van Schelven which has been featured by It’s Nice That.
Free Fall looks into how the pandemic left us feeling like we were losing control of everyday life. Tom explores this feeling in a more physical sense as he recruits 45 volunteers from different walks of life to jump off a 5 metre high platform into a pool of water.
In Tom’s own words, “The consistent theme between people I spoke to during the pandemic was a loss of control, from not being able to go on holiday, all the way through to losing jobs, homes, loved ones. We couldn’t control what was happening around us, but almost more importantly we also couldn’t control our response. We were literally locked down.” Tom says, with this project, he looked to portray that universal feeling, but also hoped to highlight the distinct inequalities between how different people were affected by the crisis.