Empty Streets, Words In Chalk: Photos Of A Coronavirus Quarantine

PLAINFIELD, IL — We live in strange times. The coronavirus pandemic has upended the normal rhythm of life for just about everyone on the planet. It's uncharted territory for many of us; a sudden outbreak of infectious disease on a scale not seen since the the start of the AIDS crisis. It's empty streets and closed stores; it's messages on sidewalks for everyone and no one in particular.

And it's what local photographer Lauren Powe has recently attempted to capture in Plainfield with a haunting series of black-and-white photos; images of a town in the time of coronavirus.

"I think I saw a lot of extremes," Powe said. "When I got to downtown Plainfield, I was like, 'wow, this is bad.' Every single business had something on their doors and I was the only person around... it was pretty depressing. The next day when... I was walking through my neighborhood, I found all these positive messages, and that actually makes you realize people are doing their best to cheer people up around them."

Powe said she has been working as a photographer since leaving her job as a 911 dispatcher some time ago. Taking photos of a town in the midst of a pandemic is a far cry from her usual work of family portraiture, but she said it was an opportunity to archive history that she didn't want to pass up.

"I mostly do families and weddings and things like that, so something like this is different from what I would normally do," she said. "But I couldn't help myself... it just became heavier and heavier every time I left my house, and I was like, 'I really want to document this,' you know? It's going to be a part of history."

Many of the images Powe captured are not happy, to put it bluntly. There's a macabre, almost Lovecraftian feeling to the pictures of empty streets and bare trees through the fog, and the shots of 'closed' signs in business windows recall historic photos from the Great Depression. Powe's choice to shoot in grayscale makes the resemblance even more noticeable.

"This is going to be a part of history. I think [the grayscale] gives it that historic feel," Powe said. "I looked at [the photos] in color and thought, it doesn't have as much feeling to it as seeing them in black and white."

But just like photos of the Great Depression, and of the Spanish Flu pandemic a decade earlier, there are images of hope amid the horror. A young man pushes an older one in a wheelchair into a hospital. A message in chalk quotes the Iranian poet Rumi, "This too shall pass." Another offers a reassurance of solidarity, "We're all in this together."

Powe said that, should the quarantine extend past Governor Pritzker's previously established deadline of April 7, she intends to go out and photograph Plainfield again. She also said she'd like to photograph her hometown of Justice, to see how it is doing during the coronavirus crisis as compared to Plainfield.

"I don't think this is something that's going to be over in the next few weeks or even months," Powe said. "I think that more businesses will have to shut their doors because of this... If I start noticing more changes I'm totally willing to get out there and take more pictures."

To see Powe's full series of photos, which she has titled 'Plainfield During Covid-19,' visit the Lauren Powe Photography Facebook page. If you have any artwork you'd like to share with the Patch community, post it on the Patch Neighbor Post page or send it to your Plainfield Patch editor.

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