The Pandemic: A Year in Review at Kennedy-King Park

Mar 21

Mar 21 The Pandemic: A Year in Review at Kennedy-King Park

In mid-March 2020 when the World Health Organization declared a pandemic due to the spread of COVID-19, doctors and researchers were struggling to understand the virus. As a result, the information disseminated to the general public was constantly evolving. However, one message became clear across all outlets, from evening newscasts to personal social media stories: Stay home!

Thank God staying home didn’t mean staying inside. The day after we were told to work from home, my friend and I who live about a mile from one another met at a park that sits equidistant from our homes: Kennedy-King. Little did I know that when I first took photos to document the days in the beginning of the pandemic that I would still be documenting the park a year later. Nor did I imagine what the sculpture “Landmark for Peace” would come to mean to me as our city and those across the nation protested the deaths of George Floyd and Briana Taylor, among many others.

Over the past year, I have spent many hours walking in and around this park. Some days I meditated on the words posted around the park. Some days I met my friend to chat about what was happening in our world, or simply to get fresh air between the hours we sat alone working at our computers, and yet another day I wept at the work that still needs to take place in our country - both in racial equity and in controlling this virus.

Here are 40 of the 100s of photos I took from Mid-March 2020 to mid-March 2021 in the order in which I took them. I have several favorites, but the ones that offer me the most hope are the most recent ones where parents are walking their children to the local school, Center for Inquiry 27, and the school buses lining the streets once again.

If you are interested in reading more about the sculpture or the history of the park, I recommend you start here: https://kennedykingindy.org/the-park

SPRING 2020