Empty Echoes

The COVID-19 pandemic, an event that redefined the rhythm of human existence, gave rise to an abundance of visual records, particularly those depicting empty landmarks. Images of the Eiffel Tower, Times Square, or the Colosseum, usually teeming with life, instead stood desolate, symbols of an unprecedented collective pause. Beyond these grandiose representations of emptiness, another layer of reality remained largely unseen: the silence of the ordinary, the stillness of the unnoticed.

By capturing common anodyne places during this period—small suburban tennis courts, unfrequented laundromats, humble neighborhood churches—the project tries to challenge the way we define significance in imagery. It shifts our gaze from the monumental to the mundane, from the globally recognized to the locally intimate with images that could only be captured through these devices.

Printed Series of 50 - Sold Out

This project operates within a counter-aesthetic: one that finds value in the unspectacular, in the barely acknowledged fragments of daily life. What does it mean to document solitude in spaces that were never destined for spectacle?

Much of our collective memory of the COVID year is mediated through curated, often dramatic imagery—masked faces, overrun hospitals, empty plazas. These have become the dominant visual language of the pandemic. This project tries to create an alternative archive of everyday life. It preserves the memory of spaces that, though ordinary, were deeply significant to those who experienced the pandemic within them. The security camera, usually associated with control and monitoring, is repurposed here as an instrument of historical testimony.