Out of Scale
Courtney Richeson seeks refuge from the pandemic in deserted open spaces.
Shifting Ground was an open call for visual reports about how the events of 2020 and 2021 reconfigured our relationship with both public and private space. Select entries were posted on the League’s Instagram account.
Courtney Richeson submitted photographs taken after the outbreak of COVID-19.
She wrote:
As a result of the pandemic I find myself in search of open spaces that lack a public component, such as baseball fields, parking lots, port terminals, railyards, overpasses, and bridges. These types of spaces are easiest to spot at night because they share a need for industrial lighting. Like a point cloud, their array of lights mirror the footprint of the ground below. I first thought of these light posts as out of scale, but I’ve begun to realize that I’m the one who’s out of scale. This realm belongs to baseball backstops, salt piles, quay cranes, signal gantries, and retired Navy vessels—not humans. It’s business as usual here in this non-anthropocentric landscape; COVID-19 doesn’t appear to read at this scale, allowing one to briefly escape.
Biographies
(@courtneyricheson) is a design lead at PI.KL Studio in Baltimore, Maryland.