Don't Forget the Car Park!

Stereoview Paul

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Hi All,
As a newbie photographer and historian, I thought I may trigger a bit of discussion!

Photographers frequently spend hours getting that perfect shot of wildlife, a fox perhaps. Or maybe that excellent rhododendron bush, or a glorious sunset.

Whilst the results are personal achievements, I can go on-line and find lots of foxes and sunsets et al. But wearing my local historian hat, there are so many things that are just not being photographed, in the time of Frances Frith the routine and ordinary such as the world of work and children playing were regular subjects.

Some examples. I cannot find typical office views from the 1980's from my local area; everyone remembers a typing pool with an array of chunky green or amber screed word processors but nobody thought to take a photo. We now have wheelybins, but before that we had black sacks, no images of a line of black sacks and more sadly not a single view of the dustmen riding on the back of their cart or throwing them into the crusher.

So a plea from me, for all future historians, please carry on taking landscapes and foxes but perhaps take a picture of the cars in the car park as well when leaving, or that filling station, the garage where you had new tyres fitted, and the pub you stopped at for lunch which may easily close in the future. Thank you

Cheers Paul
 
Great idea.
 
Definitely a thoughtful suggestion. We rely on and learn from history. The best examples are from people who remembered to document or preserve.
 
Since I'm a car nut I have many photos of just cars or parking areas in and around St. Louis from the 80's and 90's. Maybe someday in the near future I can revisit those areas and take photos of "now".
 
Have a look sometime at the long-running "Mad Men" series. Huge effort taken to recreate the office decor of the late '50s into the late '60s.

I've happily shot streetscapes around Toronto for the last 7-8 years. The city's photo archive is wide and deep going back to the 1850s. Always a shot waiting!
 

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