Man Stuck In Quarantine With His Ex-Wife And His Mom Shares All The Chaos In Hilarious Photos

"My mother was supposed to be in Boca Raton, Florida but her rental apartment fell through and she decided to come back to New York for the winter. At the same time, there was a plumbing disaster in the Los Angeles house of Sophia, my ex-wife, and she had to move out," Kramer, an event/street photographer, and TV writer, explained the situation to Bored Panda. "Sophia asked if she could put her stuff in storage and come to New York for a few weeks before she looked for a new place. We never expected a pandemic to hit the world and that we would still be together ten months later."

The photographer said he had a good relationship with both his mother and his ex-wife before the quarantine but no one wants to spend almost a year 24/7 with the same people, especially in such a tight space. "Even though Sophia and I have been divorced for several years now, and remained friends, there were a number of occasions during our quarantine together where we started having the same type of arguments that we had during the marriage, especially about boundaries. Fortunately, remembering that we were divorced made it easier to defuse things. We were already divorced!"

"My mother and Sophia liked each other, and never had the cliched tensions of mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. But some conflict grew, particularly in the kitchen. They each saw themselves as the alpha woman. There were many discussions over which type of groceries to buy, with my mother wanting the 'generic store brand' shopper and Sophia liking the fancier organic stuff. Wherever there was a disagreement, it was inevitable that I would end up in the middle of things," Kramer said, adding that he has learned a lot about women during the last year.

However, by living together during this period, the trio hasn't grown apart. Rather, they've become even closer. "We understand each other beyond our previous roles as son, mother, husband, and wife," Kramer said. "There was little room for privacy, so we were forced to treat each other as individual adults. Because my mother is in her eighties, making sure she didn't catch Covid was our top priority."

Kramer revealed that many friends are asking him if Sophia and he will get back together after this experience but the man doesn't think this year was especially romantic. "It was stressful. We were a family unit just trying to survive. We're both probably going to need some therapy after this."

Before the pandemic, he was mostly shooting street photography, so when he found himself hunkered down at home with his mother and ex-wife, Kramer's initial plan was to document it. "At first, I wanted to shoot our experience journalistically, but we were so busy making things work in real life that I trashed that idea. There was no time for art when life was happening at the same time. So, I decided that we would take our daily experiences and recreate them the next day in a staged photo."

"I insisted that we be honest in reflecting real events, so not all of our photos are humorous. They also reflect sadness, loneliness, and anxiety. If we attempted to be funny every day, we would have run out of steam in one month. By treating the photographs as self-therapy and keeping it real in intent, even if we were sometimes going for a laugh, we were able to use photography as a coping mechanism during a stressful time."