Documenting Quarantine

Now that my econ professor is a pixel-formed, 2-D blur; my classes are incomplete virtual gatherings; and social events are split-screen marriages between online Pictionary and Zoom; the footprint of the corona virus is seen to have stamped quarantine into all of us. Although it is a bizarre time wrought with both a lack of understanding and all-too-real sickness and sorrow, it is also a time of documentation and learning as we live through the unprecedented.

My roommate, now working to fulfill the requirements of painfully adapted media assignments meant to involve public events and great human connections, begins a new project. The (adapted) assignment: to take and edit 10-12 pictures tied by a common theme. Her chosen theme: quarantine.

Walking around the town of Blacksburg and through the Virginia Tech campus, the feel resembles that of an overcrowded elementary school during summer break; eerily empty. Yet, in Blacksburg, there’s also an air of some impending unknown. My roommate has chosen to walk around the campus and town and attempt to capture that present feeling and the odd evidence of everyone’s voluntary house arrest.

It is a project born out of an academic assignment, but signatory of the dynamic times we are currently experiencing, where our everyday is strangely historic. There is much to be learned and studied about what is happening around us due to this virus and taking note of our own experience is one way to do that.