THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. Tuesday, April 7, 2020 |A
human activity. It has been
over two months since Wu-
han was locked down and
became the first ghost city.
Because the U.S. has been
behind Asia and Europe in
the upward arc of the viral
curve, we have already seen
numberless photographs
from both continents of
empty streets, shopping
malls, piazzas, churches, air-
ports and amusement parks.
In the past month, as New
York City has become the
new epicenter of the out-
break, news programs have
often opened with an empty
Times Square or Grand Cen-
tral Terminal. The cancella-
tion of baseball’s opening
day brought forth an array
of empty stadiums around
the country.
We are so used to these
images by now that the only
shocking ones are those of
places where formerly nor-
mal activity has continued—
such as college kids carous-
ing on a beach in Florida, a
sight that provoked public
outrage, or dancing in a
club. Everyone surely has
had the Netflix experience I
had recently. Watching
strangers kissing or eating
in a restaurant on screen, I
couldn’t help thinking: What
are they doing? Don’t they
know they’re endangering
themselves and others?
Movies and TV episodes
made only months ago, be-
fore social distancing, al-
ready seem to date from an-
other era.
Other voids defy simple
illustration, such as the ab-
sence of needed ventilators
in this emergency. To dra-
matize a shortage of food,
you need only photograph
empty store shelves. But
how do you show the short-
ages of a machine that isproving to be critical to
many patients’ survival?
And how do you commu-
nicate in pictures the
wrenching isolation of this
disease—on both the people
dying alone in hospitals
without visits from their
families, and on the families
themselves, kept away from
their parents or children in
their final hours or, in some
cases, from their gravesides?
Dramatizing enforced sepa-
ration and the loneliness
that can ensue, even whendeemed to be for the greater
good, isn’t an easy task. The
eyes of photographers aren’t
trained to look for the
spaces between people.
Photographers of the
1918 influenza pandemic
had similar dilemmas. Their
work falls generally into
three categories: vast
rooms or tents packed with
patients in beds; people in
masks (doctors, nurses, sol-
diers, police, barbers); and
coffins being carried into
ambulances or lined up atfreshly cut graves. (Curi-
ously, you don’t see many
photographs of empty
streets, although physical
distancing was tried as a
preventive measure.)
These images were usu-
ally made with cameras on
a tripod and so almost ev-
eryone is formally posed. In
the next decade, smaller,
handheld cameras liberated
photographers, who took
them everywhere. The mis-
ery of the Great Depression
looks different from earlier
catastrophes because Doro-
thea Lange and her col-
leagues could photograph
on the go, and from any an-
gle the faces and gestures
of individuals caught in the
maelstrom.
The scale of the current
pandemic is hard to com-
prehend now, and its pre-
dicted length will try every-
one’s patience. Perhaps,
when the curve is flattened
and strangers can gather
safely together again in
crowds, ambitious curators
will organize an exhibition
along the lines of “Here Is
New York,” the massive
outpouring of photographs
by professionals and ama-
teurs about 9/11. The Inter-
national Center of Photog-
raphy is already collecting
personal images of the cri-
sis. Perhaps families af-
fected will create some-
thing like the AIDS quilt
and give us names and sto-
ries rather than statistics
about those who are gone.
Meanwhile, social media
has become the main plat-
form for photography. Previ-
ous international disasters
did not have Instagram, Tik-
Tok, FaceTime or Zoom,
which have provided wel-
come connectivity, amuse-
ments and distractions. The
coronavirus pandemic is un-
folding in the age of self-
documentation. What once
could be annoying, people
sending you photos of their
meals, is now comforting.
As a friend of mine re-
ported, after spending a few
hours online, “everyone
seems to be making soup.”Mr. Woodward is an arts
critic in New York.CULTURAL COMMENTARY
Photographing a Pandemic
Capturing the invisible is the challenge facing those whose job it is to document the visible world
A nearly empty Times Square on Thursday during the current coronavirus pandemic that has much of New York staying insideHOWDOYOUphotograph a
pandemic? A disease whose
cause is invisible to the na-
ked eye, moves by stealth
across the globe, kills indis-
criminately, provokes eco-
nomic as well as social
panic, and against which,
fornow,thereisnovaccine
or remedy?
It should be easy. The
coronavirus is disrupting
the lives of pretty much ev-
eryone on the planet and so
wherever you aim your cam-
era, you should see the ef-
fects. In reality, the virus is
taxing the skills and imagi-
nations of those whose job
it is to document the impact
of an event with insidious
ramifications. Seeing the
same sorts of images on a
daily basis for the next few
months may add another
kind of fatigue as we’re
stuck at home.
Historians summarizing
the period we’re livingBYRICHARDB.WOODWARDLIFE & ARTS
through will likely illustrate
their texts with photographs
of people wearing surgical
masks, ubiquitous in the
news since January. The im-
ages were at first unsettling.
Mixed motives can lie be-
hind the need to hide one’s
face from others. Themasked figure is associated
with criminals as well as
doctors and nurses. But blog
posts from some photogra-
phers indicate they are al-
ready tiring of taking these
pictures.
The other popular option
has been to show the voids
and lacunae in daily life—
the eerie absences of typicalSome voids defy
illustration, such as
the absence of much
needed ventilatorsFlorida’s Fort Myers Beach on March 13, above; pedestrians wear
masks while walking on 34th Street on Monday, belowFROM TOP: BRUCE BENNETT/GETTY IMAGES; EVE EDELHEIT FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL; KENA BETANCUR/GETTY IMAGES