Abstract The present paper is based on a photovoice study conducted with sixteen undergraduate social work students in their third year of study, examining their real-time lived experience of their fieldwork training in the immediate aftermath of the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. The findings of the study, based on an analysis of sixty-six photovoices, indicate four main narratives encapsulating the students’ real-time lived experiences: (i) the challenges of encountering the crisis; (ii) conceptualizing the experience; (iii) coping practices; (iv) perspectives for the future. The findings are discussed in the light of shared traumatic reality theory and transformative learning theory. Following the use of the photovoice methodology, the research conclusions encourage the assimilation of creative and entrepreneurial models of teaching and practice, in order to enable the inclusion of different types of knowledge and life experiences in different learning and research spaces.