On Day 05, I remember that I finally acted on the idea to make pictures for something, meaning for a zine or record that showed some urban mindscape during our self-isolation. I walked with an umbrella under wet falling snow, wintry mix they call it now, and took pictures along the sidewalks in Pilsen.
The only interaction with another person was with an old man, who saw me framing up a shot on a Christmas light that had been manufactured in the shape of the coronavirus model going around in online and print publications. I nodded to him and he stared, as people often do when I have the camera. He passed me and every so many steps he turned to look back over his shoulder at me, must have been half a dozen times before he finally crossed the street. I could not shake the implication that I was in some way at some sinister task, not to be trusted, fit for suspicion, and a trespasser in a neighborhood I’ve lived in for four years now.
I missed my focus and have to go back to take the shot again.
Temples.
Ravaged egg racks.
The supply chain isn’t broken, so all of the people that could afford to stockpile have stockpiled, and now the stores will be restocking for the first time since the declaration of the national state of emergency. I hope that people will take the strategy of the quarantined peoples of Wuhan: elect an individual to shop, and send them out alone to bring back goods for the family as a hunter/gatherer would have tens of thousands of years ago.
A meeting-place.
Advertising for tables and chairs.
A meeting-place.
“Life isn’t worth anything. Guanajuato”
Say a non-Mexican or someone not from Guanajuato state, Mexico can read this and vaguely understand it. If they could, they might be alarmed at the sentiment. Life isn’t worth anything? The clue to this slick’s true meaning is in the place name: Guanajuato. With that information in hand, anyone could follow up and discover, for example, classic Mexican baladeer Pedro Infante’s eponymous song, released in 1955, about the bittersweetness you might feel about the place you are from, how it hurt you deeply in the past but also how you find yourself longing for it and resenting it by turns. In this case, it would seem that the owner of the truck misses Guanajuato while they are living in Chicago.
I have been to Guanajuato and can confirm that its charms are many, its culture is unique and very unlike what is to be found even in Pilsen, a home away from home for many of its residents, myself included.
Sidewalk memorial. I am not a religious person but I like this culturally, that a person can leave their home and immediately be greeted with a reminder of those they’ve lost, and are reminded to bend down and light candles in remembrance.