Here’s
the article by David Shaftel which is on the City Visible page of The
City section of the New York Times (October 12th, 2008):
AS a senior at Bard
College
in 1979, Jamie Livingston acquired a Polaroid camera. After a few
weeks, he noticed that he was taking about one picture a day, and
shortly thereafter he decided to continue doing so.
The project, which quickly
evolved into something of an obsession, began with a snapshot of Mindy
Goldstein, Mr. Livingston’s girlfriend at the time, along with another
friend, both of them smiling at something outside the frame. It ended
18 years and more than 6,000 photos later with a self-portrait of the
photographer on his deathbed on his 41st birthday.
The narrative
that unfolds between those two images tells the story not only of the
friendships Mr. Livingston forged over the years but also the evolution
of a city. It charts New York’s progression from an era of urban decay
and fiscal crisis to a place characterized by the economic recovery
that had arrived by the time of Mr. Livingston’s death, of melanoma, in
1997. This was especially true downtown, where he lived for much of the
period covered in the photographs.
Before Mr. Livingston died,
his friends Hugh Crawford and Betsy Reid promised they would not let
the project die with him. To commemorate the 10th anniversary of their
friend’s death, they digitally photographed the Polaroids and
reproduced them for an exhibition at Bard, in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.
Mr. Crawford also loaded the images onto a Web site (photooftheday.hughcrawford.com)
so they could be experienced in their entirety.
As
the cityscape has changed, many of the pictures have accrued meaning.
“They often don’t mean anything by themselves,” Mr. Crawford said. “But
when you put them all together, they take on a life of their own.”
Ms.
Reid, who met Mr. Livingston in 1985, cited other benefits of the
collection. “When I look at a picture that I was involved in or know
about,” she said, “you’re just sent right back in time and you just
remember everything about that day.”