Closed restaurants, empty theatres, cancelled graduations – the covid-19 pandemic changed the lives of Arkansans even without a statewide shelter-in-place order. “Quarantined in the Natural State” is a project where I travel across the state and photograph deserted spaces, shuttered businesses, and empty streets to contextualize how communities in Arkansas responded to the pandemic. As the multimedia editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the newspaper of record in the state, I helped telling stories of how covid-19 claimed thousands of lives, separated families, and cast clouds of uncertainty over the future for many residents. Apart from documenting these communities at such unprecedented times, I used this project as an opportunity to process the stress and uncertainty on a personal level. Despite causing a national public health crisis, covid-19’s impact on rural America has largely been missing from the mainstream news narrative. The coronavirus rapidly spread through metropolitan areas at the start of the pandemic, yet many who live in rural areas are far more vulnerable. As I walk along the streets of different small towns across the state, I can sense the loss of “normal life” from closed businesses and empty sidewalks. Through photographing these ordinary street scenes in an extraordinary time, I aim to capture that sense of emptiness and document the impact in some small concrete way.

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About

Yutao Chen is a multimedia journalist practising visual storytelling across various platforms in the United States. Originally from Shanghai, China, he produces multimedia work that sits at the intersections of photography, filmmaking and design. Having served multiple visual storytelling roles in a newsroom setting, Yutao strives to explore creative ways of approaching stories visually and experiment with new storytelling tools and techniques. His work has been recognized by the Online Journalism Awards, the Telly Awards and the Society for News Design. After graduating from the Missouri School of Journalism and UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, Yutao is currently a news designer at the Washington Post, constructing visual stories for both digital and print platforms.

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