As I begin to photograph the streets again, I have come up with a few additional ideas about where this project might go. I've been inspired by the Maria Rogers Oral History community at the Carnegie Branch of the Boulder Public Library. At our meeting yesterday, Susan Becker presented a lovely, five-minute video she created as part of the Digital Storytelling Workshop in Denver (http://www.vimeo.com/14557606). The video is about her family of origin and a tribute to them. It's deeply moving as well as inspiring. I hope to do one about my own family at some point.
Vimeo is a different program from youtube. Susan has been able to add some music from Philip Glass, for example, which cannot be done on youtube because of their robot crawler that identifies possible copyright violations.
Some folks have asked what I intend to do with this rephotographic project when all the photographs are completed. To start, I would like to augment with some oral history interviews, as I've noted elsewhere on the blog. Perhaps a few, perhaps more than a few, interviewing residents, developers, and folks who remember "the old days"--which could mean 1978.
I'd also like to produce a short video using Vimeo. Some Tom Waits, perhaps; he was very popular in the mid- to late-70's, and he did visit Denver at least once, stopping in at the Terminal Bar. The album, "Nighthawks at the Diner," would be appropriate. A stumbling block would be to obtain a license. I think it could set the mood very well. Dan and I reviewed other music ideas such as using Weather Report...appropriate for the late 70's.
I will also have to get permission from the Colorado Historical Society to use the old images.
More on all this later.
Showing posts with label oral history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label oral history. Show all posts
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Exile, and the railroad yards
In 1976 when I was studying photography at Metro State, the prevailing custom in the field was to work on a "series," photographs that detailed a particular subject. One of my teachers chose to document gardens in Maine, focusing on hydrangeas, which she hand-colored on black and white prints. My series would be the railroad series.
I've long been interested in the places around people, the background, the contexts we move in and live in. The built environment, if you will. Denver was a place of exile for me, and as a Jew, exile is a common life theme. At Passover we say these final words: "Next year in Jerusalem." (However you define Jerusalem).
The problem with exile is that you always want to be someplace else: home, a most elusive concept. But one has to make do, wherever. Initially disliking Denver, a city with no apparent center, I chose to work in a place that was essentially an exile from "normal" Denver. Here I would wander with the camera and plant my flag.
In Neal Cassady's day, people lived in the yards, businesses operated there. By '76 the area was desolate, rather unsafe and even hostile. Yet I learned that this was an important place. Freight cars were sorted, separated here, reconnected; trains were created, dissolved, then newly created. I was careful to stay out of the way.
This was the time when coal from the Northern Plains, mostly the Powder River Basin in Wyoming, began to supersede other freight on the Western railroads. Much of it rolled through Denver. And you can bet that the computer you're using right now is probably powered by coal, carried by rail to the huge coal-burning plants around the United States.
Two years later, because of coal, I would be working on the railroad myself, as a locomotive fireman on the old Rio Grande, in Minturn and Pueblo, another exile. A story for another time.
I've long been interested in the places around people, the background, the contexts we move in and live in. The built environment, if you will. Denver was a place of exile for me, and as a Jew, exile is a common life theme. At Passover we say these final words: "Next year in Jerusalem." (However you define Jerusalem).
The problem with exile is that you always want to be someplace else: home, a most elusive concept. But one has to make do, wherever. Initially disliking Denver, a city with no apparent center, I chose to work in a place that was essentially an exile from "normal" Denver. Here I would wander with the camera and plant my flag.
In Neal Cassady's day, people lived in the yards, businesses operated there. By '76 the area was desolate, rather unsafe and even hostile. Yet I learned that this was an important place. Freight cars were sorted, separated here, reconnected; trains were created, dissolved, then newly created. I was careful to stay out of the way.
This was the time when coal from the Northern Plains, mostly the Powder River Basin in Wyoming, began to supersede other freight on the Western railroads. Much of it rolled through Denver. And you can bet that the computer you're using right now is probably powered by coal, carried by rail to the huge coal-burning plants around the United States.
Two years later, because of coal, I would be working on the railroad myself, as a locomotive fireman on the old Rio Grande, in Minturn and Pueblo, another exile. A story for another time.
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