2020 - Photography on 35mm Film "the Covid Stills"
Art Log #20.01: 35mm film photographs of an empty National Mall during the first weeks of the COVID-19 shutdown, capturing absence, silence, and civic rupture.
Art Log #20.01
Title: Mall Watch, Void
Medium: 35mm black-and-white film photography
Scale: Series (multiple frames)
Year: 2020
Context: Photographed during the first weeks of the COVID-19 shutdown, Washington, D.C.
Description:
A series of 35mm film photographs documenting the National Mall during the initial COVID-19 shutdown. These images depict an emptied civic landscape—monuments without crowds, ceremonial space without ceremony. The Mall appears suspended in time, stripped of its performative role and reduced to form, symmetry, and silence.
Why This Piece Matters:
These photographs capture a once-in-a-lifetime rupture: the sudden absence of the public from one of the most symbolically charged spaces in the United States. The National Mall is designed for gathering, protest, remembrance, and scale—but here it stands vacant, revealing how meaning collapses without people to inhabit it.
Photographed on film during the earliest days of uncertainty, the work reflects a collective pause—fear, quiet, and disbelief etched into physical grain. The emptiness is not peaceful; it is uncanny. The images ask what our monuments mean when there is no audience to witness them.
At a personal level, this series deepened my interest in place as emotional container. These spaces, usually loud with history and bodies, became mirrors for internal disorientation. The work reinforced my belief that absence can be as emotionally forceful as presence.
Themes Introduced (that recur in later work):
Absence and silence
Place as psychological mirror
Collective memory under threat
Public space without the public
Fragility of civic ritual
Series Note
This piece is part of an ongoing log of my artwork, spanning years and mediums. I’m collecting it all in one place to better understand the throughline of what I make and why I make it. At its core, this work is about creating art that lands in the body before it lands in the head—work meant to evoke a visceral feeling and linger. Each entry is one step in that larger conversation.
View the full archive —> here.