i’m sure every fellow photographer is going to have a story called like this but this is my story.
i went on a travel to madrid just when covid-19 was about to change the world forever.
we were in fear of catching covid in spain and not being allowed to travel back to germany. luckily everything went well and we arrived safe and sound back in berlin just after spain announced their first and globally one of the hardest lockdowns.
germany would follow with measures to fight back against the uprising of corona soon. but the first days back in berlin were completely weird - after coming from one of the first risk areas we started to wear masks, keep distance, and would only go out when necessary. as you can imagine if something’s new people get anxious about it, so we got looked at for protecting others by wearing masks, people were talking behind our backs, you name it.
luckily wearing masks would eventually become more normalised over time and it shows that it’s been helping a lot. (which people might argue but this is my opinion).
madrid was a bit overwhelming to me so i didn’t take much photos, it felt like the beginning of ‘the walking dead’ but we’ve seen a completely empty city with almost the same number of inhabitants as berlin, parks got shut down, we had to stay in the airbnb, would only go to the supermarket, and tried to stay up to date via twitter which just made me more anxious to be honest.
anyhow one of the perks of corona to me, clearly, are that i began to cycle almost everywhere i can. i enjoy it so much that i cycled over 1,500km this year already. on some of these cyles i had my camera with me to document the emptiness of berlin (and a few photos from madrid to start off with).
i hope you enjoy!
a closed down shop in the city centre
a famous local market that is usually super busy (as we read on tourist pages)
a man reading about the lockdown announcements (perhaps?)
the empty city centre.
brandenburger tor without a million selfie-taking people in front of it
almost empty potsdamer platz with police checking on people.
allesandersplatz (everything different plaza)
empty checkpoint charlie (one of the former border checkpoints between east- and west-berlin
isolated with a mask on the underground. (wearing masks had become mandatory in berlin very early on)
a local online sex shop claiming “there’s no place like home” urging people to stay home
