Introduction

We are living in unprecedented times. Unemployment is at an all time high, gas prices are at an all time low and businesses that everyone has relied on for years are temporarily closed down. This has had innumerable consequences on every facet of our lives. For photographers, all of this has presented countless “once in a lifetime shots” of places that have never been empty before and will never be empty again. People are able to finally see New York without traffic, San Diego without smog, and locally, what the places that we’re so familiar with look like when there’s not a soul around. 

This is the purpose of this essay, to document the effects of these strange times. As I drove around the suburbs of Milwaukee, I stopped anywhere that I know will never be empty again. Schools, airports, malls and highways are all included in the pictures here. Not all of the them are pretty or unique, but they exist to provide a record of how things were when all of this is forgotten about in years to come. After all, that’s why we take pictures. We need to remember the moments that are all so easily left in the backchannels of our memory.