At the start of the Covid pandemic, I found myself wandering around capturing the subtle and not-so-subtle shifts as significant changes were taking place all around us. The world felt oddly unfamiliar; a strange silence filled the streets and neighborhoods as I walked. Emptiness cloaked in the warmth of summer—an unsettling tension caught between dread, fear, and the quiet unraveling of everyday life. A low hum of collapse echoed low and heavy, shaking communities across the world, and all we could do was drift in silence, gazing blankly into the liminal landscape that our hometowns had been transformed into.

One day, as if out of nowhere, we found ourselves living in a world rewritten. We went to sleep with the hum of normalcy in a world that still felt familiar, and woke to a landscape reshaped in shadows. Upheaval moved like thick, heavy smoke and the slow burn of unmaking left everything feeling hollow and hopeless.

Storefronts stood eerily empty, many closing their doors well before nightfall. Local businesses—once lively and full of character—were clearly struggling, their survival threatened as people stayed home, behind closed doors.

However, amid the panic-buying, empty shelves, drawn blinds, and the static hush of isolation—through the strained voices, unanswered questions, and the constant fear that was pushed deep into so many—people seemed to be regaining some hope. All around, signs began to appear—taped to windows, staked into lawns, propped up outside storefronts—each one a quiet, though resonant marker of a moment we were all living through together. They were the voices of many, refusing to give up and let the world slip beneath a tide of darkness.