photo idea
i want to find a place, outdoors maybe, where i take a photo of that place once a year and do it for maybe twenty years and see how it changes.
This idea came about from two things. First is the general idea that i've developed lately about the non-permanence of things that people think of as permanent, particularly buildings and architecture. Moving down to New Orleans has done that for me; even though i moved here three years after Katrina, i still see some of its after effects both in concrete physical form and also in mentality. Your home could be wiped out at any time.
Second, i live very close to Palmer Park, a smallish park area on the edge of uptown. In the past few months they've erected a children's playground structure there, one of those multi-colored climb-up-slide-down-move-around sorts of things. They've zoned off a few other areas that makes me think that they'll be putting down a couple more.
And it struck me how for me it seems like this addition to the park, but for people that move down here after, they'll see it as a *part* of the park, something that was always there. And that feels like a neat complex sort of "multiple reality perception" ideas that needs to be captured.
So i want to find a place that i think has that potential over a period of 20 years to change. Something that has a sense of permanence but can evolve over time. I don't think that will be *terribly* difficult, but it's hard to judge completely.
The practical issue of this is that it assumes that i'll be living in the same area for twenty years and the morbid thought that i'll still be alive in twenty years. I'm not sure how long i'm going to be in new orleans; i could see myself here for another ten years, but maybe not, maybe only three or four. And i don't want to have to fly down here once a year just to take a picture.
We'll see what brews.