Last weekend, I once again found myself heading into the city of Boston to observe and document familiar locations that have gone through some truly trying, surrealistic and often tragic times.
I’ll hold off on the social commentary and present instead a series of pictures of the downtown of a city that, like many others nationwide, have dealt with a double whammy of recent civil unrest alongside a months-long pandemic.
Be safe, everyone.
After two months of exile, I returned back to downtown Boston this past Sunday to take a lengthy walk around town, get some much-needed exercise and take some pictures in the process.
As staying at home enters its second month -I think it’s been two months- here in Massachusetts, I continue to dig through the archives to work on some older pics. Here are a few more from Boston back in March of 2020 and one photo taken down on Cape Cod back in October of last year.
So while we all wait to get back to something that slightly resembles normal life again, stay safe!
Every so often, I will take my photos and combine them into a short film. Usually, this is done to try and sell a new book or seek funding for a new book project. This time, however, I simply decided to take all of my processed pics from my recent Boston series and put them together in a short film simply as a document of this incredibly surreal, heartbreaking time we are all going through right now.
I hope you like it.
For me, one way to try and combat both cabin fever and isolation is to work on editing existing photos. Here is another group of photos taken from March 22nd in Boston, Massachusetts.
If you would like to see the entire set in order, you can find that page here on my official website.
Stay safe, everyone.
The following is a second set of pictures from my walk through parts of the city of Boston on March 22nd, 2020 during a “Stay In Place” advisory.
Stay safe, everyone!
I can’t count how many times I have walked through Downtown Crossing, the North End and the Financial District of Boston in my lifetime (as I am sure many of you can’t either). Usually, it feels like familiar territory. But today, it felt completely foreign to me. The last time it felt like this? The week after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.
From the TD Garden to South Station and everywhere between, the foot traffic was equally as scarce as vehicle traffic. Just as it was in Salem earlier this week, stores, bars, restaurants, you name it, were all closed.
The eerie calm that covered this part of the city today felt like a heavy blanket, one I would only be more than happy to pull off and throw on the ground. There were some people around, most either on their own or couples out for a Sunday stroll. Fortunately, most if not all were practicing the ol’ social distancing. There were also the occasional homeless individuals out and about, but even they were few and far between.
The silence, the lack of interaction and day-to-day life were okay at first but quickly made me feel uneasy as I walked around trying to find images of isolation and emptiness to document. Walking through the dead silence of the Financial District, I soon began to feel like I was in the 2002 film “…28 Days Later.” If you’ve seen the film, you know that this is not a good feeling to get from your Sunday city stroll.
After about 90 minutes of aimless wandering and picture taking -the first group presented here-, I was only more than happy to get the hell out of Beantown for the time being (I couldn’t even imagine being in New York City right now). I love Boston, but not like this.
Boston, New York, London, India…wherever you may be as you read this. Please be safe and practice social distancing (I took these shots by myself and was never close to anyone else). We’ll see you back here soon.
Here are a couple of more shots from my wandering around the North End and Seaport Districts the night of my birthday. I wanted to try and capture the noir feel of the films of the 1940s and 50s in the first shot. Probably getting someone to lie face down in the middle of the alley when I took the shot might have helped with that.
Perhaps not.
Shawn Fitzgerald Photography 