The Corner of Covid and Main Street: A Film Photography Project
Seventy days of documenting the eerily deserted streets of Los Angeles left me mentally and physically drained. As I sat on the bank of the Kern River watching it flow, I realized that to fully document this unprecedented time in history I needed to shift focus: from our habitat to our humanity. It’s not the impressive skyscrapers or stadiums, renowned restaurants or museums, that make a place unique, but rather the people who call it home. Human beings breathe life into the steel and concrete anatomy of a city. Photographing them became imperative.
“ I needed to shift focus: from our habitat to humanity.”
Before I left for the river, I began seeing news stories about racially motivated attacks on fellow Americans in response to the president assigning blame for the international pandemic, naming it the “Chinese virus”. Numerous stories emerged from across the country of people lashing out to varying degrees of severity against Asian Americans. Somehow not considered front page news, these stories were nestled between the headlines of COVID-19 death tolls and infection rates. Other stories reported on the disproportionate number of infections and fatalities plaguing communities of color. So while the issue of race has been entangled with the COVID pandemic from the very beginning, what’s not being explicitly addressed is why?
“it’s exposed the paradoxes of injustice and bigotry inherent within our society.”
Only if/when you read between the lines do you clearly comprehend this country’s systemic racism that has allowed these communities to suffer such staggering figures. This virus has been the catalyst to an unprecedented, pivotal time in American history: it’s exposed the paradoxes of injustice and bigotry inherent within our society. It’s revealed that even in the face of a global pandemic, so many of us, including federal leadership, have been quicker to place blame on others where we should have only been helping each other.
So on May 11, 2020
I began a new project.
The Corner of COVID and Main St. is more than the documentation of a deadly disease but rather living proof that we are all created equal. A virus does not discriminate. It sees not the color of ones skin. It favors no particular religion or creed, nor does it hunt another specifically. Instead, it dispassionately attacks the human race entirely. Its love for mankind is blind and therefore the next victim could be any one of us, from any village, any city, any county in the world.
Take from this pandemic that simple truth; apply it to your life, offering love and compassion to all human beings. We are ALL in this together, because nothing separates us other than ignorance and miseducation. Let this virus be your teacher, the world your classroom, and these photographs your textbook. Look into the eyes of the people in these images and know that I am no different from the one before, as you are no different to the one after. Today, we are all living on the corner of COVID and Main Street.
Continuing the project across the country
Cities and states photographed for the project thus far.