Spring 2020 at the Park

I took these photographs at my local park in the Spring of 2020, when the entire world was either hidden away in our homes or ventured outside to parks and other outdoor spaces for a taste of pre-pandemic social or “normal life.” And yet, all the swings were cordoned off. I fear that these photographs are too literal: childhoods stopped in their tracks, the end of play, the social awkwardness that comes from biological mistrust of others, the existential seriousness of illness and death. I once had a professor and colleague mention that “literal art,” whose narrative is too easy to grasp, might as well be illustration, an instructive sign. This nags on me as I present these photos. I have to say that multiple persons’ visceral reaction to these photographs began to change my mind. Sadness, melancholy, disappointment, entropy, standing still... these were all emotions that 2020 brought to us to contend with. So, while I might be embarrassed by the easy legibility of these photographs, I am reminded of the most concise, poetic conceptual art that “nails it on the head” without making the viewer feel self-conscious. Pieces come to mind like Felix-Gonzalez Torres’ billboards of an empty white bed with the shapes of lover still imprinted on the bedding to commemorate the tragic toll of the early days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Or the seemingly simple, political, declarative sentences of Jenny Holzer’s “Truisms.” Sometimes, I suppose, art can hit you over the head and you’re better off because of it.