history by default

thought that the scars had healed enough to finally work on some negs from the now more distant past. the negs were from the overreaching project run by a person so incompetent and self loathing that he could have a promising career as a minor dean in institution of higher education. i would have made nice income as one of the official staff but i couldn’t take the rampant stupidity of the person running it. the great plans for this archive ended up moulding in a basement of a college somewhere in the area.

i was pursuing what has and still interests me borders - as everything had to be done within the city limits,i was heading to where chicago stopped - and long walks of wonder.

it was on one wonder chosen in my usual illogical way - a walk across 87th street in chicago from the dan ryan east to the lake. it was a street i had never been down in an area where most would supposedly feel nervous - don’t know why except that it is on the south side.

it was february.

in trying to be systematic, and actually finish a project, was going through the sheets one by one when i came across this.

another reason why film trumps digital.
the image is not interesting at all, the only reason it was kept as it is attached to other negs and to cut it out would be more trouble than it is worth. if it were a digital file from someone who has been trained on a digital camera i wonder if it wouldn’t have been deleted soon after the image was taken. history wouldn’t have been allowed to build up around the image.

i didn’t know who obama was and while the neg beside this one had another political poster - and there were quite a few placards for politicos in the series, don’t even know if i made the snap due to that or if i was feeling particularly atget that day and wanted the penetrating light and needed something in the foreground.

now though there is this time based ping pong - what i know now what i saw but didn’t know then. the peripheral coming to the forefront. ironically this is one of the things photography because of its ease does so well - although fewer and fewer people with artistic pretensions for the medium actually deal with it - as at one time remnants were kept because it was easier than discarding them. now photography being made even more user friendly, the documenting of history by default is being obliterated by the wee trash can ikon on every camera.