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#EmptinessAroundUs
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2020-04-19
Emptiness Around Us: Empty Street
Down an empty State Street in Downtown Albany, NY in late April. This photo was taken standing in the middle of the street, which normally would not be possible as this street is usually busy and packed with cars. The SUNY Central Administration building is seen straight ahead in the distance. -
2020-04-19
Emptiness Around Us: Empty Bus
A CDTA bus pulling up to a bus stop on State Street in Downtown Albany, NY in late April. All riders were required to wear masks, and there were barely any riders on the bus. Its electronic sign reads, “STOP THE SPREAD.” -
2020-08-10
Emptiness Around Us
The month of April found me back in my parents home in a suburb of Albany, NY. My university was closed, and I was forced to move out of my on-campus housing a month earlier. All of my classes continues online, and my film photography class was required to move to a digital photography platform as we were not allowed access to our university’s darkroom to develop our film. I found myself wondering how to find subject matter amidst a global pandemic, where at the time grocery stores were just about the only places open, in what I considered to be the most boring small town in America. After weeks of submitting photo after photo of my backyard, house, dogs, and siblings, my professor asked me to try and find a new subject for my photos. I really had no idea what else to photograph, but on a trip to Target for groceries with my mother, I found myself wandering through row after row of bare, colorless shelves. I took a photo of this to send to my father, proving that there was not a roll of toilet paper to be had, but then thought about how interesting it could be to document the rows and rows of desolate shelves, leading me to a new subject for my photography class assignments: emptiness. I moved from documenting empty shelves, to empty parks, to empty streets. Emptiness was a subject I could find nearly everywhere I looked during the coronavirus pandemic. Looking back on these photos a few months later, I am so glad I was able to use an art form I love to document what life was like during this strange and scary time in our world. I hope that years from now, my photos could help someone have some idea of how empty our world truly felt during this time.