Thursday, September 18, 2008
Another Country
I thought this story had an interesting angle that you see occasionally, but not as directly. After Scott Strazzante, a Chicago Tribune photographer, chronicled the end of a family farm he had photographed for years, he returned to the land to find a subdivision. He was invited into the home of one of the families and began noticing similarities in what he shot. (He describes those now as "really eerie".) The slideshow directly parallels the images, placing them side by side. It is interesting to see the similarities and differences he found in the two lifestyles. And it's cool to see how a story can develop when you return to it years later.
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9 comments:
wow! that is incredible. i love the idea of this story!
This is awesome. Some of the similarities are pretty eerie! Funny how much times change....
lesley, i really really like this a lot. I wonder how much time he had to spend photographing the subdivision to get this many correlating images. amazing.
a while ago i think i remember reading about a really really long-term project one photojournalist did where he photographed like almost every resident of this small town (or a lot, at least) and then maybe 10 years later came back and photographed them again. it was way cool. i'll try to find it. i like the revisiting-of-a-place-much-later idea, too.
i absolutely love this story! placing this contrast in front of the reader is perfect for this story. the way the pj sets hardship and loss up against images of a family enjoying this new life, oblivious to the history that lay their foundation, is a great way of educating the public. it shows the ease that modern communities accept streamlined comforts (suburban sprawl, homogenization, how agribusiness is killing community/local farms) without seeing the effects.
he sets these images right in front of you and says, "pay attention."
I feel a bit like a lurker but I stumbled upon this post and comments while poking around the web this afternoon.
To answer Ellie's question, I photographed the farm portion of this story between 1994 and 2002 and then I started at the subdivision in April 2007 and continue to shoot it today. The photos at the subdivision came much quicker than the farm most likely because there was so much more going on at one time.
In late July. MediaStorm launched a multimedia version of my project. This incarnation is called "Common Ground" and can be found at http://mediastorm.org/0023.htm
Anyways, I hope it wasn't too rude of me to interject myself into your blog.
All the best, Scott
Whoa ... Scott Strazzante found us. That's pretty cool ...
For those who don't know who he is, he's one of Them - the luminaries, a brilliant storyteller. Google him, you'll see ...
And Scott? You can interject yourself any time you like.
Wow. I've seen development like this, but I don't think I understood how much impact it had until now.
Please, please, please come to one of our workshops?
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