Photography by Kyra Carlisle. During Spring Break of 2020, Illinois Gov. Pritzker, acting on advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) shut down non-essential services in the state as COVID-19 exploded across our country and globe. Teachers moved to rapidly adjust their classes to an online format, and students were forced to make some life-changing adjustments. No more band sessions, no more plays, no more hands-on art classes, no more computer labs, no more face-to-face instruction, no more sports, no more racing around to find parking—Parkland College became a dystopian landscape. Photographer Kyra Carlisle set out to document the college so that we would have a visual memoir, perhaps even a memento mori, to remind us of the year that never really was. These pictures might be part of the grieving process, or a catalogue of history, or even a somber warning to the future, but whatever signposts they serve we must acknowledge that we all suffered through this together. After all, there is no need to try to frame the pandemic as something positive. For us at the Prospectus it certainly was, and is, a period that we will be glad to put behind us.
—The Prospectus Staff
