Closed playgrounds in Hoffman Estates
The first time I saw the parks after they had been shut, I was immediately struck by the playgrounds to an extent I hadn’t been by anything else with this pandemic. In a way, the caution tape and barriers around all the playground structures reminded me of the abandoned carousels and playgrounds in Chernobyl. They seemed apocalyptic, and I became obsessed with them, spending any warm day with my camera biking around the neighborhood trying to capture them. Even with all the iconic images that come out of this crisis, I think for me some of the most striking will be these empty, cordoned off playgrounds.