"Lonely Avenues/The First Wave" is a photographic study, created by Keith Berr during the first wave of the COVID-19 Worldwide Pandemic. It was a time when much of America’s society was locked down, in an attempt, to mitigate the virus from spreading.
Keith and his partner Linda reside in their inner city live/work compound, located in Cleveland’s Asia town. Every Sunday morning, for 8 weeks, they ventured out with pre-dawn excursions into the city, driving and walking the interstates and streets. The experience was eerie and haunting, bringing to mind scenes from a movie of an apocalypse, or plague.
They explored the uninhabited streets to create a body of work documenting the isolation and “Lonely Avenues” of what their city was doing, in response to the virus. Keeping the city empty lowered the viral curve and pushed COVID-19 back, helping to keep people from becoming infected.
Keith utilized a Canon EOS 1DX and a 16-35mm Canon wide-angle lens to create photographs with a sense of being in a dystopian novel by Huxley, or Vonnegut. He produced the impactful images by choosing low angles in the middle of what would normally have been busy intersections and highways.
Keith believes that the photographs record a time in our lives when people have shown the capacity of coming together for the common good, by having abided to the stay at home orders to aid in controlling the viral spread. It is so important to honor the new “Normal”; respect others, wear masks in public, keep safe social distancing and washing our hands.
These photographs were created to remind us all of the sacrifices that have been made to help in mitigating the COVID-19 pandemic on its first wave. We did this to regain our avenues and a semblance of normalcy, but sadly the virus is still raging today in January 2021.