This stark image of the Oculus in downtown New York is part of a collection of photos of once-bustling locations that were rendered deserted by the global health crisis of 2020. Despite the emptiness or because of it, the locations took on a haunting beauty captured in The Times article, “The Great Empty.”
During the height of the coronavirus outbreak in March 2020, The Times sent dozens of photographers out to take images of popular public plazas, beaches, fairgrounds, restaurants, tourist meccas and train stations. Michael Kimmelman of The Times wrote that “emptiness proliferates like the virus,” helping to inspire the headline for “The Great Empty.”
“These images are haunted and haunting, like stills from movies about plagues and the apocalypse, but in some ways they are hopeful,” wrote the author on March 23, 2020. “They also remind us that beauty requires human interaction.”
He added, “Empty buildings, squares and beaches are what art history textbooks, boutique hotel advertisements and glossy shelter and travel magazines tend to traffic in. Their emptiness trumpets an existence mostly divorced from human habitation and the messy thrum of daily life. They imagine an experience more akin to the wonder of bygone explorers coming upon the remains of a lost civilization. They evoke the romance of ruins.”
