'Carers' print by Robert Speker with Sydmar Lodge Care Home

Print 'Carers' reconstruction album cover by Robert Speker, 2020. Produced with Sydmar Lodge Care Home residents and staff during the first Covid-19 Lockdown in the UK. Copying an album cover by Queen, four female carers are shown in deep shadow wearing pale or dark blue uniform. The carer at the front wears blue gloves, with her arms crossed under a badge saying ‘Lisa’. Lettering in white at top left. Printed at the size of a standard LP record sleeve. Signed and edition numbered below.

This set of 12 Care Home Album Covers attracted significant media attention in July 2020 after being tweeted by photographer Robert Speker. Working as Activities Coordinator at Sydmar Lodge Care Home, North London, Speker collaborated with residents and staff to recreate a series of famous album covers. In each case the figures in the album photographs are replaced by a care home individual, and the artist’s name or album title are replaced with the new sitter’s name or a reference to the care home.

This was the sixth photo in the series, and recreated Queen's 1974 album ‘Queen II’. The recreation was a really important one in the Care Home Album Covers series. Speker explains that he “really wanted to use carers in a recreation, not only to highlight the carers at Sydmar Lodge, but all carers and care home workers throughout the world who have worked tirelessly throughout the pandemic with very little acknowledgement. I encouraged four carers to participate during their shift. At first, I wanted them wearing the masks that they wore when dealing with the residents, but then I decided that the only reference was the carer at the forefront wearing gloves. This was Covid-compliant at the time of shooting when masks were not as obligatory as they are now. I also chose to change the angle of the lighting to create a more eerie feel to the photo.”

These first 12 album covers produced by Speker and care home contributors were developed into a charity calendar for the Alzheimer’s Society for 2021. Together they help to capture the particular experience of those living and working in care homes during the Covid-19 pandemic, which attracted wide media attention and public criticism for seeming to be ‘abandoned’ and for the extreme isolation imposed on residents, unable to see loved ones for many months. Equally, however, Speker’s joyful work demonstrates the creativity that flowered across society during the first lockdown, and the work by many artists to offer support – whether financial or emotional – to NHS staff, the wider public, and each other.