a totally empty beach in Brazil

These photos reveal a hushed world

Empty beaches, still streets, sleeping children—photographers capture a world quieted by coronavirus.

Cocoa Coast, Brazil

The day photographer Luisa Dorr took this picture the beach was deserted. "There were no signs of humans anywhere in sight," she says. "I was alone. It was quiet, clean, and full of love—not human but natural."

Photograph by Luisa Dorr

The pandemic has brought quiet, at least to some. Noise still fills hospitals crowded with coronavirus patients and homes containing pent-up kids. But quiet can be found in streets emptied of cars, in shuttered businesses, and in those times when there’s no place to go and nothing to do but listen to the soft sounds that used to be drowned out by our busy lives.

Photographers, confined like the rest of us, are capturing those moments of silence, of reflection, of clarity. In New York, a photographer, alone and sick with COVID-19, notices sunlight illuminating his parents’ portrait. In California, a couple cherishes a moment alone near the sea. In Poland, a library seems more hushed than it’s ever

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