The Chicago Project -- Day 5 of 5

One of this project's main goals was to create a window into the past through photography. Each photo we take -- snapshot or prize winner -- captures a brief moment in time. I read about a project where extreme pinhole cameras captures multi-year exposures, and the creator theorized that 40-year captures could be accomplished. Even those hyper-long exposures are insignificant flashes in human history, the earth's timeline,  or time since the universe was created.

Humans simultaneously seek to halt change while embracing most every aspect of it, heralding the positive elements as progress. We also, conveniently, ignore the negative elements.

Christmas, 1972 or 1973, Chicago, Daley Plaza. The tree is behind the Picasso, but the Picasso, here can become a window.



The original vantage point is now a fountain, and it was cold and I didn't want to get my feet wet and catch pneumonia. So here is as close as I could get. It's close, but not perfect.




I'm not sure what Photoshop was thinking with this blend.


In hindsight, I should have included the modern people in the lower left corner, but I was preoccupied with the tree and unchanged buildings.

This project was about more than just photography, and history, and using technology to create images that would have been impossibilities when I began taking photos. This project became a way for me to give my girlfriend and her father something to discuss, some time for a conversation about who he was when he was our age.