The original morning paper story
I'd gotten less shy about sneaking in to take the photo of the front page of The Gazette where the children wait for the school bus.
This morning, I was surrounded by a small crowd of four of five girls, all about ten years-old, as I was taking today's photo. By now, they seem to have gotten used to my unusual behaviour, so rather than glaring at me, they are now curious as to why I do this every day. "What is this for?" "Why are you doing this?" and so forth.
I explained that I take a photo of the front page every day so that my friends "on the Internet" can see what the day's newspaper looked like, that when you read the news online, you only get the text and some photos, it's nothing like the real newspaper, and besides, not everyone gets The Gazette. But of course, this doesn't explain why I go on and take photos of other papers I see along the way ...
The truth is, I don't actually know anymore. It's just part of my morning routine. Each paper I see provides me with a new photographic challenge.
But I can tell you how and why it began. When I got this job, I'd leave for work early every morning, and there was always a newspaper just in front of the door. The war in Iraq had just begun and each morning my foggy half-awake thoughts would do a complete turnaround merely from glancing the five or six words that jumped out at me from the day's main headline. After about a week of this, I decided to photograph what I see of the newspaper every day. If it does nothing for anyone else, it held meaning for me, and it affected me enough to give me the desire to chronicle it.
As I left the girls behind to head to work, one of them asked me, "Are you an engineer?" I said, "No, I'm a computer scientist" and was promptly attacked by existential anxiety as I crossed the street — am I really a computer scientist? I was certainly trained as one, and I'm pretty sure I think like one. Oh hell, did I just tell a lie?
Maybe tomorrow, I might learn their names. And maybe tomorrow, I might get a chance to tell them the true story of how the photographic chronicle of the morning papers actually began.
Posted by sniffles at June 10, 2003 10:18 AM