Echoes of the pandemic: photographs of a city in quarantine

During the quarantine and thanks to the job I had at the time, I was one of the privileged few who were allowed to roam the city freely. With my nikon f5 camera with a nikon 28mm f2.8 lens, a tripod and a Kentemere 400 roll of film that my dear friend Daniel Caballero Zurita gave me, I went to experiment with long exposures, several seconds long, that could reflect what I call the echoes of the pandemic.

The echoes of the pandemic echoed through the empty streets of the city, reminding us of the presence of the invisible enemy lurking in the darkness. The lonely streets and deserted buildings looked like something out of a horror story, as if the city itself had been abandoned to its fate. The absence of sound and movement created an apocalyptic atmosphere, in which only the virus seemed to have a life of its own. The echo of fear and uncertainty spread like a plague, and no one knew when the end would be.

The photographs I present were taken in the heart of the city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, in the midst of the pandemic that ravaged the world in 2020. At a time when quarantine had become the new normal, the streets that were once full of life and human activity were desolate and empty. Like an echo of the emptiness that took over the city, these images seek to convey the sadness and death that lurked around every corner. Buildings and avenues became a post-apocalyptic landscape, and the few passersby who ventured out became lonely figures amidst the desolation.

Through these images, I want to capture the emotional and psychological impact that the pandemic had on the city, and how uncertainty and fear gripped every corner.

To achieve these photographs, I used a technique called long exposure, which consists of leaving the shutter open for several seconds or minutes, thus capturing the movement and lights that occur during that time. This technique allows you to create interesting visual effects, such as light trails or blurred silhouettes.

Long exposure requires a camera with manual mode, a tripod to avoid camera shake, and a remote shutter release or timer to avoid touching the camera while shooting. An ND (neutral density) filter can also be used to reduce the amount of light entering the lens so that longer times can be used without overexposing the image.

The Kentemere 400 roll is a fine-grain, high-contrast black and white roll, ideal for this type of photography. I developed it myself at home with household chemicals and scanned it with a flatbed scanner.

Here I share with you some of the pictures I took during those days of quarantine. I hope you like them and that they make you reflect on what we lived through and what we can do to prevent it from happening again.

Thank you for reading this article and for appreciating my work. If you liked it, you can follow me on my social networks or visit my website to see more of my photography projects. You can also leave your comments or questions below. See you soon.