“...if I could find the spot where truth echoes, I would stand there and whisper memories of my children’s future”...
COVID-19 is a new illness, that’s right; a “new” illness, by all accounts “unheard” of, “never” seen “before”, never has a virus had such a global reach as quickly as this…” new” virus has touched everybody, seemingly nearly everywhere. COVID 19 can affect your lungs and airways, and it's caused by a virus called coronavirus. The main symptoms of coronavirus (COVID-19) are a high temperature and a new, continuous cough, and as such everyone must stay at home to help stop coronavirus (COVID-19) spreading, of which make for fantastic photography pieces, and undoubtedly sparse opportunities to take those snaps.
It’s the snaps that speak to what the public/people must contend with. Social distancing, by virtue will no doubt harness the fragility of trust between fellow human beings, and because every fellow human being doesn’t want to succumb to the worst-case scenario, if they are unfortunate enough to contract COVID 19.
Thus queues are formed outside supermarkets, non-essential shops are closed, meaning if it isn’t food, medicals, or petrol to run your vehicle, to the job deemed “essential”, the irony is before COVID 19, the likelihood is many people did not feel their job wasn’t considered “essential”. Alas here we have it; wash your hands with soap and water often to reduce the risk of infection, when in public stay two metres apart, no visits to friends and family and under no circumstance accept visits from friends and family, of which all make for a scenery of densely populated cities, finding it hard to find a living soul, at the very least to the extent we’ve all come to accept the hustle and bustle of city streets.
Fortunate enough to capture photos before the “lock-down”, at a time when the lock-down was yet to be enforced, by law, it was the quietness of Leicester Square at 10:30 am on a Saturday morning that in effect was a marvel to behold; the absolutely no tourists outside the gates of Buckingham Palace, the little else but the amazing sunshine and blue skies acting as a backdrop for quiet streets, and traffic lights on green marshaling non-existent traffic.
What I was doing was engaging in digital dialogues, with what use to be, as opposed to what it is now, and what it might become, what I was engaging with, was the last thing any human being wants, or needs in their already colloquially fragile city existence, and that was the uncertainty, and the anxiety it breeds, the fear it provokes and the loneliness it prevails, unanswered “how?”, a circumstance existing between the 1st world and 3rd worlds, and the global street images that yoke the two.
It's fair to say the point of this COVID 19 consequence, was and is, while it might be for some the algorithm of the sun and moon where the planets were when “we;” the people were here, in time, this uncertain time, what is universal is everybody has already bought into a specified state, and how the mind from this point on conceives it’s place in this world is poignant to say the say the least.
For myself, as far as this social chapter in our lives are concerned, very concerned, what these images portray is a language speaking to a universal emotion, in many respects, in the words of Saul Williams: “if I could find the spot where truth echoes, I would stand there and whisper memories of my children’s future”, is a logic hard not to disagree with, and impossible to deny the relevance as “we” all perceive it to be now.
