Through The Lens

Striking lockdown images from around the world reveal the forlorn disposition of once bustling tourist destinations.

With the pandemic affecting nearly every country, nationwide lockdowns have become the norm around the world. It gives us pause to see our bucket-list destinations out of bounds for now. But we also know that for us to travel tomorrow, we need to stay in today. Here’s a round-up of what the world looks like right now.

LOCKDOWN, QUARANTINE, SELF-ISOLATION, social distancing—this glossary of dystopian terms has oft been repeated since the COVID-19 outbreak brought life to a screeching halt across the world. Towns, cities, and even entire countries have been forced to retreat indoors. Nothing quite drives home the extent of the pandemic than images of the world’s busiest landmarks—now strikingly desolate. Never before have we seen, and hopefully never again will we see, such poignant frames of solitude. From a deserted Eiffel Tower in Paris to the Taj Mahal watched over by armed guards, these photographs from around the world paint a vivid, and stark, picture of the impact a tiny microorganism has had on the entire planet.

But where there is despair, there is also hope. When pianist Alberto Gestoso and saxophonist Alexander Lebron Torrent took to their respective adjacent balconies in Barcelona and performed a heart wrenching rendition of Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On, quarantined neighbours stepped out in their own balconies to cheer. In various cities of Italy—one of the worst affected countries—people sang Bella Ciao, a popular resistance song, from their balconies. Elsewhere, in the UK, paintings of rainbows began appearing on windows, turning homes into art galleries. Canadians, always polite and generous to a fault, started the unique trend of ‘caremongering’—an initiative of young, healthy people helping out the old and vulnerable with daily chores like grocery shopping to help them stay home—and it quickly caught on around the world. While misinformation around pets spread in some communities, a Florida animal shelter saw—for the first time ever—adoption of all of its dogs, as people sought company and comfort of pets inside their homes. We may be under the shadow of a particularly dark cloud, but we have at least recognised that we are all in this together.

It was this sentiment of solidarity that Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli alluded to, when he performed a live Easter concert in the empty Duomo Cathedral in Milan. “I believe in the strength of praying together”, he remarked on YouTube later. Many miles north, Pope Francis walked into a vacant

St Peter’s Basilica during the Easter Vigil, as millions joined him through television sets and digital platforms. “They did not stop loving; in the darkness of their hearts, they lit a flame of mercy,” he said to all of humankind.

From left: On April 11, the 18th day of the nationwide lockdown in India, the usually tourist-laden boulevard of Rajpath in Delhi lies barren; Spanish flamenco guitarist Joselito Acedo plays the guitar on his balcony during his confinement at home on April 9 in Seville, Spain. Many musicians have taken to playing their instruments on their balconies to uplift spirits and to thank those working on the frontline.

Clockwise from left: The Duomo di Milan wakes up to a deserted landscape as Italy battles the COVID-19 pandemic; the Red Square in Moscow, Russia, wears a sombre look as citizens of all ages follow a stern home isolation order imposed on March 30 by the Moscow authorities, the violation of which carries fines ranging from 1,000 to 50,000 roubles; Pope Francis attends the Stations of the Cross in an empty St Peter's Square on April 10 in Vatican City, Vatican. The Via Crucis, or Way of the Cross, meditations for Good Friday this year were prepared by prisoners, volunteers, family members, and others associated with a corrections facility in Northern Italy; quarantine measures and a lack of people bring mountain goats to the streets of LLandudno in Wales on March 31; policemen on motorcycles patrol the streets at the Trocadero Square in Paris, France, on March 21.

Clockwise from left: The Howrah Bridge in Kolkata sees a rare day of no traffic on March 29; a soldier stands guard near the Taj Mahal in Agra, Uttar Pradesh. The popular monument, which saw over seven million visitors last year, was closed to tourists on March 17, a week before a nationwide lockdown came into effect; the shops are shuttered down in Delhi’s beating heart and shopping paradise, Connaught Place; pigeons swarm the Gateway of India in Mumbai as Maharashtra emerges as one of the worst-hit states in India; people line up outside a ration shop in Andheri, Mumbai, on March 25 while maintaining the mandated social distance from one another.

Clockwise from above: Federico Mantova, owner of the Donna Gnora farm, which delivers fruit and vegetables with rowing boats, and David Angeli sail the Grand Canal for deliveries on April 8 in Venice, Italy; a lone woman walks towards St Paul’s Cathedral across a near-deserted Millennium Bridge in London, England, on March 24, a day after an unprecedented UK lockdown was announced; an MTA subway car lies empty during rush hour in New York, USA, which has emerged as the new epicentre of the pandemic.