Dispatches from the Time of the Virus III: Every Picture (Photograph) Tells a Story, Don't It?

     

As someone who has enjoyed and appreciated being able to take photographs that people interpret, discuss and use in some small way to make sense of life, I have been frustrated in trying to find photos that express the changes in everyday life due to the coronavirus/COVID-19 crisis.

     While my use of my iPhone 8 may place some limits on me, I also realize it is hard to take a photo that truly captures the changes in, say, downtown Buffalo, where, for those who are unaware, I work in the Rath Building for the Erie County Department of Social Services. As of this writing, I am deemed essential personnel and work at the office on an alternating schedule, Monday, Wednesday and Friday one week, Tuesday and Thursday the next week. Walking from where I park my car to work and walking on my lunch break, it is so obvious that traffic is down to the absolute minimum downtown, both for pedestrian and vehicular traffic, with the corresponding quiet. Problem is, a photo of how quiet and empty the streets are cannot be easily shown through my cell phone photos, or maybe otherwise, because you need me writing that this photo was taken at 8 AM or noon or 3 PM on a workday during certain weather to give it any context that would be different from a photo taken on a holiday or weekend. The same with a closed or empty restaurant or business, and maybe a photo of a virtually empty NFTA Metro Bus or light rail rapid transit with interspersed masked riders and staff, but no one wants to stop a bus or rail for me or anyone else to take a photograph.

     So, when I took this photograph Friday, March 28, at first I thought it was an amusing, if unplanned, play on words from Mardi Gras masks to the masks that at that time mainly medical personnel and first responders were wearing and shortages were only thought to be off in the future.  For the record, this photograph was taken of a storefront on Elmwood Avenue between West Ferry Street and Cleveland Avenue in Buffalo’s Elmwood Village. Obviously, the store closed in a bit of a hurry and days before Mardi Gars (Tuesday, March 25). I have spoken both about the above-mentioned issue with my lovely wife, Valerie Dunne, as well as about this specific photo; one of the many great things about being married to her is that she is a professional photographer. She encourages me to go with my intent and to be honest to the image and to try as hard as possible, even with the cell phone camera, to present a quality image that can tell the story. While I liked this image from the start, it took me a while to realize that this addressed several issues I’ve worried about and tells several parts of the story the more I look at it.

     While I am about to finish an installment of this series I started about a week ago (no, really) when this finally hit me, it hit me almost as hard as the first time I heard a Ramones song.