Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting
It is time for you our viewers to vote for the winner of the #NoAvatarSocialDistance Challenge. While we are staying at home and social distancing in our first lives, in our virtual world we are free to hang out, to congregate, even to parade down the street without fear of getting a virus or passing one on. We asked readers to celebrate this freedom in photos and I’ve chosen my three favorites.
What made this stand out for me was the effort to recreate the normalcy we have lost, including the strangers on a train or in a club or hanging with your gang of friends. You can see all the entries in a Flickr gallery here.
Now click through to see larger images of the three finalists and at the very end, vote for your choice.
This photo is from Maerin Tamura, capturing the youthful cluster of friends walking together. If you have ever gone to a mall or sat on a downtown park bench, you have seen large groups of teens walking together, windowshopping or really just hanging out. This captures that “let’s hang out” vibe that the lockdown does not allow.
Lori Matthews “The Right Place” captures the normalcy of traveling around the city with a group of strangers on public transit. Here in Portland, buses are limited to 10 to 15 passengers to allow social distancing. I wonder how long until we can congregate with strangers like this again.
Mind Carlberg’s photo of a couple dancing at a club surrounded by strangers. All close together in a crowd even the most reckless governments are not yet allowing is a wonderful recreation of the normalcy of dating. No Zoom parties here.
The Stay-at-Home orders that we live under where we have governmental leaders who want to protect lives seem onerous at times, but imagine what it was like during the Spanish Flu Epidemic a hundred years ago. Public gatherings, including church services, were often banned. People were encouraged to stay in their homes. Imagine the loneliness. People had telephones though not so universally as we do today. They were nearly always party-line phones which meant your neighbors could listen to your conversations so I doubt there was much intimacy in those conversations. Of course, there was no internet and definitely no Second Life to meet up and congregate.
See all of Cajsa's Choices here. Follow Cajsa on Flickr, on Twitter or on her blog.
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