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Notes from the Pandemic: Chapter Two: (Not) Being There

  • W Hotel, Passeig del Mare Nostrum, Barcelona, Spain. May 2, 2020, 10:06:09 PM(Not) Being ThereIn 40 years of being a journalist, I’ve always been able to be there, to see for myself. Until the pandemic. For the first time, I couldn’t experience the world the way I always have – couldn’t make sense of it -- by seeing it and writing about it or photographing it. During the height of the global lockdown in April and May, I struggled to understand what the world looked like. Until I figured out a way to see it.“(Not) Being There” is the quintessential pandemic age/armchair traveler story. It is seen through the lens of dozens of live cams around the world. They were my “camera,” the only way I could see for myself what was happening; I used them to make photographs of a remarkably still and empty world. I “visited” towns and countries where friends live, and destinations on my bucket list; I visited places I know well, and places I’d never thought about or knew existed until I fell down the rabbit hole of live cams. I {quote}went{quote}  to Tokyo and Barcelona and Easter Island and Kathmandu. Times Square, Latvia, Graceland, Mykonos. I photographed a single turbine wind farm in Antarctica, a telescope in Hawaii, an empty beach in the Maldives, the Abby Road zebra crossing in London. I spent days in a coral reef aquarium and on an elephant reserve in South Africa. In the former, I blissfully practiced {quote}street photography{quote} as dozens of fish streamed by and across and into the live cam lens, and in the latter, I tracked big game all through the day and into the night, thanks to a park camera with infrared capabilities. I envied the worlds of the fish and the animals, envied their freedom from the coronavirus.I finished the work in mid-May; in one of those mood swings of these upside-down times, I simply no longer felt the urge to travel. The world was starting to open up. George Floyd was murdered. America burst into protests. Everything changed. Except the pandemic.
  • 42nd Street, New York, New York. April 12, 2020, 9:22:57 PM PST
  • South Lake Tahoe, Nevada. April 12, 2020, 10:31:36 AM PST
  • Snowman Cam, Gaylord, Michigan. April 12, 2020. 10:13:38 AM PST
  • Abby Road, London, England. April 12, 2020, 10:00:39 PM PST
  • George Washington Bridge, Fort Lee, New Jersey. April 12, 2020, 8:37:35 PM PST
  • Caltech Submillimeter Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, Hawaii. April 14 2020, 10:14:58 AM PST
  • Pandas, Atlanta Zoo, Georgia. April 28, 2020, 7:08:26 AM PST
  • Taksim Square, Istanbul, Turkey. April 13, 2020. 10:20:11 PM PST
  • Graceland, Memphis, Tennessee, April 14, 2020. 8:14:14 AM PST
  • Esparteiro Garden, Macau. April 12, 2020, 9:02:05 PM PST
  • Moai statues, Easter Island. May 1, 2020. 11:42:58 AM PST
  • Playa de Levante, Benidorm, Spain. May 7, 2020, 8:55:13 PM PST
  • Piazza Duomo, Cefalu, Sicily, Italy. May 2, 2020, 10:04:47 PM PST
  • Tidal Basin, Jefferson Memorial, Washington DC, U.S. April 12, 2020. 10:20:24 AM PST
  • Elephant park, South Africa. May 10, 2020. 10:51:14 AM PST
  • Kathmandu, Nepal. April 26, 2020, 9:07:44 AM PST
  • Fontana di Trevi, Rome, Italy. April 12, 2020, 8:37:49 AM PST
  • Freedom Monument, Riga, Latvia. April 12, 2020, 8:32:30 PM PST
  • Dolphin Research Center, Marathon, Florida. May 3, 1:01:02 PM PST
  • Ernest Hemingway House, Key West Florida (cat cam). May 6, 2020, 6:18:23 AM PST
  • Ross Windmill Farm, Antarctica. May 7, 2020, 5:17:26 pm PST
  • San Diego Zoo, San Diego, California. April 29, 2020, 12:55:22 PM PST
  • Niagara Falls. May 6, 2020, 3:45:25 PM PST
  • Shibuya 109, Tokyo, Japan. April 13, 2020, 10:00:07 PM PST
  • Times Square, New York, New York. April 25, 2020, 8:28:14 PM PST
  • Castro Street, San Francisco, California. April 12, 2020, 8:08:07 PM PST
  • The Parthenon, Rome, Italy. May 2, 2020, 9:57:37 PM PST
  • Tourist center, Niedzica, Poland. April 14, 2020, 7:50:37 AM PST
  • Finolhu Beach, Maldives. May 2, 2020, 10:12:24 PM PST
  • Windmills, Mykonos, Greece. May 2, 2020, 9:59:13 PM PST
  • Coral reef aquarium, Aquarium of the Pacific, Long Beach, California. May 13, 2020, 4:36:32 PM PST
  • Piazza San Marco, Venice, Italy. April 12, 2020, 8:36:05 AM PST
  • Elephant park, South Africa. May 9, 2020. 4:39:22 PM PST.
  • Piazza del Campo, Siena, Italy. May 5, 2020. 1:01:35 PM PST
  • Notes from the Pandemic
    • Chapter One: These Days
    • Chapter Two: (Not) Being There
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