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The Kazakh photographer who covered Covid from a hospital ward

In the summer of 2020,machine learning engineer dice Kazakh photographer Andrey Khludeyev contracted Covid-19. He smuggled in a small film camera to capture life on the pandemic's front lines.

As the world reacted to the spread of Covid-19 in early 2020, the vast Central Asian country of Kazakhstan appeared untouched.

Despite bordering China, the source of the global pandemic to come, no cases had been reported. Then, on 13 March 2020, that changed. Two Kazakh citizens who had returned from a trip to Germany tested positive for the disease – the first cases confirmed in this country of more than 20 million people. On 15 March, the country's president, Kassym-Jomary Tokayev, declared a state of emergency that was expected to last a month. Covid-19 would go on to kill more than 13,000 people in the country before officials declared the pandemic was under control.

Even then, Kazakh photographer Andrey Khludeyev says he was not particularly worried. "I first heard about Covid from taxi driver. I thought it was a joke, or 'fake news'. Time soon showed how wrong I was. When it was officially announced I had a flash in my mind: I'd go there [to a hospital] and make reportage. 'No Andrey, you're not allowed, you're not even an accredited photographer, no chance,' I said to myself. Well, I was wrong for a second time.

"The quarantine started in summer 2020 and I was lucky at first. Then in a month or so, I had the first symptoms. It was like a cold or flu: high temperature, about 38-39C [100-102F], coughs and so on," he says. His symptoms persisted, so he went to a medical clinic for tests and X-rays.

The X-ray results were concerning. "It showed a double-sided multi-area pneumonia at the first stage." The seriousness of his condition surprised him, as he felt no worse than if he had a cold or a minor case of flu. "And right at that time I had a call, and I was told that a friend of mine, a photographer, just passed away from Covid complications. He also was just fine for about a week before."

The doctors in the clinic did not tell Khludeyev to go to hospital, but he was worried enough to call a friend who had a medical background, and sent her the pictures of his X-rays. "She called me back right in a minute and said that she had called her doctors, and they told her that I should get a taxi and go to hospital right now, as I would not make it at home. So, I basically had no option." He arrived home and told his wife, who had been caring for him at home while he had been ill, and he quickly packed and left for hospital.

Khludeyev says the atmosphere in Kazakhstan at the time was "strange"; there were not yet any Covid-19 vaccines, and the hospitals were full of patients. Many people chose to self-isolate.

Khludeyev found himself admitted to a hospital in the city of Almaty in south-east Kazakhstan, a facility staffed with many volunteers. He found the experience surreal. "From one side I was in hospital, people were nice, I had all necessary treatments: medicaments and injections, and was under 24-hour control and I still felt myself fine. But I saw how people around me, who were fine, suddenly started suffocating… So it was constantly confusing; like, you are well, but it could change in a moment."

One of the things that Khludeyev had taken with him when we packed for the hospital was a camera; a tiny Soviet-era camera called a Chaika-II. The camera is a half-frame model – it takes 35mm film, but only uses half the frame for each shot, thus doubling the number of pictures that can be taken on a roll of film. "Without knowing if I would survive or not, I simply couldn't miss a chance… it could be my last shoot." He loaded the camera with a 36-frame roll of black-and-white film, which he ended up shooting in the three weeks he was a patient in the clinic.

"I had a plan to make a story, probably a book, so I just shot everything and anything I could, both on film and on iPhone," he says. "Of course, I couldn't miss shooting doctors and medics as well as patients, the story wouldn't be complete without them.

"At first, both doctors and patients were suspicious when I asked if I could take a photo. I told them that I am a photographer and photograph everything and anywhere I am. So, they let me go on. Then I shared with the doctors their portraits in their uniform, sweating from the inside, masks, and they liked the photos a lot.

"One day a doctor came and said: 'Sir, you shouldn't tell us you are photographer, there is a queue of six doctors in a corridor now and they want you to photograph them. If you like, I will tell them that you don't feel well.' 'Of course not,' I replied, 'Let's go!'"

The images Khludeyev took on his camera have a strange, hallucinatory quality. The image of medical staff assembled in front of the camera looks like it could be a remnant from the clean-up of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster – their protective suits keeping out a different kind of invisible assailant, while the light leak around the pictures edges adds to their eerie quality.

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The hospital's gloomy surroundings also add to the mood. "The hospital I was at should have been renovated right before quarantine, and they decided to delay it, so they could use it as Covid hospital," says Khludeyev. He processed the film and digital images so that they had a similar look. "I wanted to show a true story, that Covid is not a joke, nor fake and a real danger. It was a serious fight for life, so I tried to correspond that in a style of photographs as well."

Khludeyev says that, five year later, and having made a full recovery, he looks at the images with "nostalgia and gratefulness. These doctors and medics were volunteers, they literally risked their lives for us… Some were teachers, students, some had to interrupt vacations. The did a great thing and saved thousands of human lives. I truly appreciate and thank them and, all as well as my wife, my friends and my parents who supported me a lot.

"On the other side, that was one of the most precious periods of my life when I enjoyed doing photography that people appreciated, and I felt every second of my life. It was both great and terrible."

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