DARIN HAYTON

Tag: Empty streets

  • Documenting Covid-19

    Documenting Covid-19

    An article/interactive in today’s NY Times, “The Great Empty,” reminds photographers that they can play a role in documenting history. This is the first pandemic we’ve experienced since photography has become widely available and practiced. Sure, photography was around during the 1918-1919 pandemic, but only to a relative few. Today there are multitudes.

    Chairs await occupants in an empty courtyard in Milan.

    I hope photographers who have the time and resources, insofar as they can do it safely, get out and document our current experiences. Our experiences and struggles not just in big cities or famous tourist destinations, but also and perhaps more importantly in the tens of thousands of small towns that are struggling to survive.

    No, documenting our current social crisis won’t produce any income, but those photographs might (especially if printed) serve future generations when they confront and try to cope with their own pandemics.

  • Documenting the Effects of Covid-19

    Documenting the Effects of Covid-19

    I have been thinking a lot about how photography can do something worthwhile over the coming weeks. Or more specifically, given my good fortune to have a job that will continue through the current health crisis, I wonder how I can use my photography to do something meaningful. Is there something I can do with my camera that might be useful for somebody beyond me?

    Thinking of previous periods of social distress and upheaval, photographers who have gone out and documented their world have, I think, recorded something meaningful. Beyond the famous images, e.g., Lange’s “Migrant Mother,” there are countless less famous photographers who have pointed their cameras at the world around them as it convulsed and was wracked by traumatic events.

    It seems that today photographer could produce an incredibly robust record, a record that could be compiled into a useful resource for both our present and the future.

    I am only a single person with a camera, but I can document the effects of Covid-19 on my city. So over the coming days and weeks, that is what I will try to do.