Chalk Signs
By Steve Bennett | August 3, 2020
Writing in chalk on the sidewalk is common in my neighborhood these days. The statements are mainly about “masking up.” This one is perhaps the most succinct I’ve seen.
Chalk signs in Cambridge
Mind-boggling how a utilitarian public/personal health recommendation became a politicized lightning rod and a symbol of personal autonomy and power. But it’s not the first time. In an excellent article in The New York Times today, Christine Hauser describes how masks quickly became a political football during the 1918 Spanish Influenza pandemic that claimed 675,000 lives in the U.S. alone. One of the most poignant stories from the article relates the statement of an individual who appeared before a judge after being arrested for non-compliance. As reported in a contemporary Los Angeles Times story, the anti-masker “…told the judge that he ’was not disposed to do anything not in harmony with his feelings.’” That sums up the situation today, and gives teeth to the old saw (unofficially attributed to Mark Twain): “History doesn’t repeat, but it often rhymes.”
Steve Bennett is a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based visual artist. He began taking photographs more than 40 years ago, in the age of film, and transitioned to digital photography in the late 90s. Today, in addition to taking and making traditional street, macro, and landscape photographs, he creates photo-based abstract composites designed to take viewers on fanciful flights of the imagination through virtual realms. His work has been displayed in numerous juried exhibitions, and at Google’s Kendall Square, Cambridge offices as well as various technology, biotech, and financial service companies in the Boston area.