Pandemic in Focus
Somewhere Along the Curve -- Boston During the Pandemic
Edward Boches | Massachusetts, United States
Organization: Boches Photography
Photographer: Edward Boches
Pandemic in Focus
Organization: Boches Photography
Exhibit Title: Somewhere Along the Curve -- Boston During the Pandemic
Location: Massachusetts, United States
The rapid emergence and spread of Covid-19 has turned life upside down, especially in cities. In Boston, sidewalks quickl became empty; stores were shuttered, and hundreds of thousands of students left for home. Boston, normally alive and awake at a time of year when tulips are coming up ad the Red Sox season is about to begin, became eerily quiet. The images here seek to find some visual beauty in the dramatically changed urban landscape.
In mid- March, as Covid-19 struck Boston, initially emanating from a Biogen conference at a local Marriott hotel, people began social distancing. Within another week and a half, as community spreading of the virus became apparent, Governor Charlie Baker asked all non-essential businesses to close and requested that citizens shelter at home to the degree possible. Within a day the city came to a halt. Stores closed, traffic ceased, public transportation ran a reduced schedule — ferrying hardly any passengers — and the streets and sidewalks stretched from one end of the city to the other with barely a person in sight, save the hundreds of homeless who had nowhere else to go.
The edict did allow people to leave their homes to shop for food and essential items, and to get exercise, as long as you practiced the now normal behavior of staying six feet away from any other person.
On my Brompton folding bike, carrying a Leica digital camera, I began riding through the city, documenting the emptines.
The images here, taken between mid-March and late May, cover what appears to be Chapter One in a long story and a slow return to normal life. They begin as the city shuts down, while the most recent images here represent the first week of starting to open up again.
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