COVID-19 Empties Out Public Spaces
For the Atlantic, Alan Taylor compiled a bunch of photos of normally bustling places that are a lot emptier due to the COVID-19 crisis. This is the Grand Mosque in Mecca:
A Europa league football match played in an empty stadium (play in Italy’s Serie A league has been suspended until at least April 3):
And here’s Sunday mass at a church in Milan:
You can see the whole photo gallery here.
See also Ghost City Photos of a Usually Bustling Shanghai During Coronavirus Outbreak.
Update: Several more photo collections of the outside world’s increasingly empty spaces:
- New York Was Not Designed for Emptiness (NY Times)
- The Great Empty (NY Times)
- Life in the Coronavirus Era (The Atlantic)
- An Eerily Empty NYC Just Before The PAUSE (Gothamist)
- Scenes from live feed webcams from around the world (Noah Kalina)
- Empty streets and disrupted lives: A world in the wake of coronavirus (Washington Post)
- The Quiet Emptiness of a World Under Coronavirus (The Atlantic)
- Coronavirus concerns empty public spaces around the world (Boston Globe)
- Coronavirus impact: Satellite images show world cities before and after outbreak (CNBC)
- 14 Photos of What Public Life Looks Like During a Coronavirus Outbreak (New York)
- See Photos Of Eerily Deserted Places Around The World As A Result Of The Coronavirus (Forbes)
- The Visual Landscape of a World Shaped by Pandemic (The Atlantic).
- Surreal Drone Tour of a Pandemic-Emptied San Francisco (YouTube)
- After the end of the world: the eerie silence of the Las Vegas Strip (Guardian)
For Nieman Lab, Cherine Fahd and Sara Oscar wrote about the uncanny melancholy of empty photographs in the time of coronavirus.
These artists demonstrate a longstanding fascination with photographing architecture devoid of human subjects.
This fascination may be due to what architectural historian Anthony Vidler described as “the architectural uncanny.” Abandoned and deserted spaces, he said, make our familiar spaces become unfamiliar. For Vidler, this estrangement from space hinges on visual representation, such as in photography. These photographs of empty public spaces capture a departure from our everyday and instead visualize this uncanniness: an alternative reality emptied of our presence.
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