This Life, This Isolation
Yeah, we’ve heard – these ARE unprecedented times.
No football, no sports, pubs, clubs and restaurants closed, shopping malls empty. We are ordered to remain at home and only go out for food supplies, medicines and exercise. If we do go out we have to stay at least two metres away from other people.
Nations across Europe, North America and the world are taking action to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. It has changed all our lives and all aspects of the way we once lived.
Lean times for street photographers, well maybe. But isn’t this – also – a good time to be a street photographer and to help document this difficult, yet extraordinary time in history? And…in any way you see fit? From indoors looking out or wandering the near deserted streets of once busy, bustling cities…? Keeping your distance, of course, and using it as part of your exercise regime?
Copyright ⓒ Jaime Bird
Arguably not quite a street photo, but nevertheless very much of the time, Jaime Bird’s shot of a toilet roll holder with an empty toilet roll and S.O.S written on it, I thought, was brilliant. From a public toilet, to describe this as great is not too strong when seen within the context of this present crisis.
Jaime’s photograph is a clear reference to the selfishness of some people bulk buying toilet rolls and other items, bread, fruit and veg and so on, juxtaposed with the selflessness of health, care and keyworkers..
It reminds me of the sobbing critical care nurse, who, having just come off shift, could find none of the essentials she needed for herself and her family. The selflessness of the health worker, the care worker or the keyworker prepared to risk their own health to look after those less fortunate compared to the selfishness of others in one very telling shot.
Copyright ⓒ Jaime Bird
Locked into the whole vibrancy of these difficult times, Jaime was also shooting her local street from her house. A usually busy Pittsburgh thoroughfare, cluttered with signage and traffic lights, now completely deserted, capturing the eerie reality of a very strange now from inside her house.
Again it resonates with these very trying days, of self-isolating, of staying indoors, of looking out at the world.
To the east of Pittsburgh over 370 miles away in New York, Bob Cooley a former photojournalist who has worked for The Economist, Washington Post and Forbes – to name a few – went walkabout in New York to try and get a sense of how the virus has temporarily altered the city.
Copyright ⓒ Bob Cooley
In one telling shot Bob picks up a blurred man walking across the foreground of the photograph while in the background we witness this city of some 8.5 million souls near deserted. The man is stooped, hinting at dejection and resignation, while Cooley’s decision to shoot in black and white gives the photograph a nice sombre and surreal feel to it.
The lack of people on the street and moving around, strikes as very cinematic. Like a scene from a Danny Boyle movie where the world has – prophetically – being struck down by a mystery virus which has escaped from a research facility (28 Days Later, 2002).
Perhaps more accurately for these wonderfully surreal shots of New York, we are reminded of I am Legend. The movie was made in 2007 from the Richard Matheson book of the same name, which remarkably dates from 1954.
I had imagined Bob taking aim and just as he had depressed the shutter a hurrying Will Smith – the only living man left in a New York wiped out by a virus – had, unwittingly cut across his field of vision.
Cue music : Simon and Garfunkel’s The Only Living Boy In New York…
Copyright ⓒ Bob Cooley
Which merges brilliantly with another shot from the same series.
In a near deserted street, in the left hand corner of the photograph, the brilliantly appropriate ‘We All Get To shape Our Future’ is lit in neon. It resonates, it rattles around in our heads like a silent revolution. We do all get to shape our future but only if we stick together, pull together and we all – unless you are a medic, nurse, carer or keyworker, or out getting a daily exercise – STAY THE HELL AT HOME.
Copyright ⓒ Bob Cooley
You might be the largest store on the planet, but their ain’t nobody shopping there at the moment. This is taken from a very clever angle and the effect is eerie. Apart from the Macys sign the only people in shot are two of New York’s finest in the left hand corner. What we are left with in all Cooley’s photographs is the impression of the near emptiness that is now the reality of street life in the Big Apple
Copyright ⓒ Andy Kirby
When I look at this I imagine he is running, and he has been running for the last five minutes. The underground station deserted, but he is focused on the train he is trying to catch. Until he reaches the carriage on time and clambers aboard.
It is a time to be extremely careful and above all stay safe, stay at home. Do take exercise, a chance for some street photographers to get out in the fresh air and visually record deserted or nearly empty streets.
We are legend, we will get through this, if we stick together, stay home unless it is an absolutely necessary to go out, and, of course, keep our distance.
Here I am he thinks…get your underground train right on time…
*I am indebted to Jaime Bird, Bob Cooley and Andrew Kirby for all their help in writing this.
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