Q-103: Urbanity

A girl from the suburbs, you grew up not paying much attention to what most people call the "urban decay." You grew up around manicured lawns, trimmed trees, and maintained homes-- well not your home, but at least the rest of the cul-de-sac was crack free and well-kempt. But you've always lived so far from the major towns that urban decay was something you merely sped through on your way to the theater, or to another set of suburbs beyond the city.

But you've been living in Dallas for 1 and a half years now, and you've said forever that you wanted to go down town, go to south Dallas, go to Deep Ellum. You wanted to go explore and check out what the real city looks like. You want to go take pictures of something that isn't pefectly formed, perfectly maintained, perflectly loved. You want to see something real, raw, left behind. And then you heard from someone who might want to buy something from such a series. So now it's not just a personal desire, it's a project. But you still don't go there. To start with you used your camera as an excuse... it wasn't sophisticated enough, just the one lens, not enough features to really grab the grittiness of the real city. Until Christmas rolled around and now you're sporting the new Canon and you're still using your camera as an excuse.

Who wants to take an $800+ camera into what most people would consider the... rougher side of town. Besides, you know that the best shots will be captured on foot. You curse that you don't know more poeple yet, curse that you haven't found a girlfriend to invite with you, curse that you don't have the stones to just head downtown and get the shots you really want. But... God provides, in his own way-- and one Sunday afternoon you find yourself in the Godmother's Jeep heading to the store when she say, "Want to go check out Ross Ave? We can seek out some Urban Decay..."

Since you learned your lesson last week-- you of course have your camera with you, packed, loaded, and ready to go. So you head downtown in a Red Jeep Cherokee piloted by the best godmother on the planet, and you unpack the camera, playing with the buttons even though you still don't REALLY know how to use them all properly, and finally decide that for this round-- automatic is the way to go. Thank heavens for Canon Automatic-- almost as good as doing it yourself.

You test some shots on manual and automatic at your favorite local haunt (literally!)

         


And then you turn and head downtown, joking and laugh all the way. You lose track of your location-- the only downside to traveling with Godmother, who knows 5001 ways to get anywhere in Dallas. It means when you go back you'll have to take a notebook to keep track of where you found what. But for now, you snap away from street to street. You curse when the flash fires, and again when it doesn't. You stop counting the shots that won't work, the ones that are too blurry, the ones that didn't frame the way you wanted them because the light went from red to green before you had the chance to properly line it up.

But as the day goes by you realize some of the shots are usable, good even. A cover of patchy puffy almost linear clouds makes a striking backdrop to the decay of downtown.



You find that there is a real beauty to this part of town. Something elegant about the symmetry of decay.



Even places where business still thrives to an extent, the view is fascinating-- a must see if you will.



As the day goes by it's time to head back, north, back to the burbs, back to where construction replaces destruction. Back to where they're preparing for the return of someone's president. Not yours necessarily, but someone's. You wonder how long it will be before the cleanup heads downtown. How long before new construction replaces the heart of the city's history. It's not that you mind-- you can appreciate needing to put the city's best face forward. There is beauty in the newness as well...



There is symmetry and reflection and interest in what sparkles just as there was in what fades

  

But at the same time, you fear that what will really be lost is not just the history, but all of what comprises....