As I took this photo from my window on the third floor of the Rubin dormitory about two months ago, I marveled at how empty it all was. At the time, as classes were in full swing and students ran about, it was unheard of to capture such a desolate scene. Today, of course, that is all one finds. The students are gone, the cars parked, and not a soul is lurking about YU. Unknowingly, then, the photo gave a preview of how the world would look in just a few short weeks. In that sense, it was prescient.

The photo is a literal bird’s-eye view, along the lines of those first perfected in nineteenth-century Paris through artists like Victor Hugo, masterfully exploring this idea in his novel Notre-Dame de Paris. The central grass area is devoid of a soul, and there are no cars in sight. Sinister dark-grey clouds creep across the sky and cast an ominous light over the neighborhood. Welcome signs line the ground but have no one to greet. Slight darkness hangs over the picture and paints a dreary landscape, with the panoramic nature of the photo contorting the image to make the world seem even emptier. The photo captures the future of what is to come without the viewer ever knowing it.