CORONA BALLET

    This series of unaltered digital photographs were taken on March 18th 2020 at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, one day before the first ever executive order for stay-at-home quarantine in New York City. Extreme Ballerina Ashlee Rose Montague (@ashleeRoseMontague) & photographer Laura Kimmel (@metametagasm) set out in the abandoned ghost town that was NYC in mid-march 2020 to capture its eerie and unprecedented emptiness. The harrowing images of a gas-masked ballerina dancing through naked NYC streets in Times Square, Grand Central, Midtown and the Financial District underscore the fragility of urban life, the arts, and the economy during this traumatic time.

    Laura Kimmel's photographs were published internationally in Vanity Fair and Huffington Post among others, and the shoot was covered by Reuters news photographer Andrew Kelley and published countless times on major news outlets such as ABC, World Economic Forum, The Atlantic, and most recently a CNN article titled "The defining photos of the pandemic — and the stories behind them"