Distanced | STAT

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHER Bethany Mollenkof is a documentary photographer and filmmaker based in Los Angeles. Her work tells complex stories about gender, culture, identity, and representation

through an engaging, vibrant, and artistic process. In addition to STAT, her photographs have been published in the New York Times, Time, The New Yorker, and National Geographic, and other

publications. ABOUT THE PROJECT One-fifth of the Americans living in rural areas are people of color, mostly concentrated in the South and Southwest — both areas that experienced high

Covid-19 death rates. Even before the pandemic, rural health infrastructure was strained, if not buckling, as hospitals and clinics struggled to stay open. These challenges exacerbate

systemic inequities in care. As the pandemic hit, there was a devastating reality: If Black people living in rural areas get Covid-19 and can’t access the treatment they need, they are more

likely to get severely ill or die from the virus, or have prolonged and difficult recoveries. Mollenkof spent six months reporting and creating thousands of photographs to intimately

document the pandemic’s profound impact on Black life in the rural South. _ Photography and reporting: Bethany Mollenkof, Visiting Nieman Fellow for STAT Director of photography: Alissa

Ambrose Text editing: Gideon Gil Page design: Jennifer Keefe Additional photo editing: Crystal Milner Additional reporting: Olivia Goldhill Copy editing: Sarah Mupo Product manager: Alex

Pavelich Web developers: Sinuna Chaudhary, Fernanda Cox _