Pandemic: a noun, an outbreak of a pandemic disease.

 

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The year 2020 has been a year of many changes. When Covid-19 happened, the world went into a panic. Suddenly, everyone became trapped inside and told to social distance. The current world is full of stress and worry as the sequestering has taken over our lives.

 

Missing my favorite leisure activities—go-karting, seeing movies in theaters, and roaming the malls—I’ve been driving around, sometimes aimlessly, to de-stress and try to reclaim some of my previous life. In my many excursions, I realized, with all the closures, giant parking lots were empty. Fascinated by these empty spaces and realizing these pieces of utilitarian land were unique looking, I chose to document them. Not wanting to photograph these at street level, I chose another vantage point. Using a drone allowed me to see the world from another perspective. I decided to create a typology of these parking lots, and to maintain consistency, I deliberately flew my drone at 100 feet. In this way, I was able to define what each parking lot had in common, and what made each one different. Each lot had the traditional lines, in different colors and angles—some have newer asphalt, some old, some have cracks, while others are home to graffiti created by doughnuts and spinouts.

 

After creating this portfolio of images, I thought back to the meaning of pandemic. The nature of the pandemic has confined our movements and has shrunk my world. Working with the unique properties of the drone, I gradually expanded my view, I began creating circular panoramas that represented a view of the earth as from outer space. They reflect a more hopeful view of life continuing on the earth.