Photo Outing
Sunday, April12th, 2009
end of public domain
I decided to spend this Easter Sunday hunting around and photographing the abandoned structures that make up Ft. Snelling Park. Located 15 minutes south of MPLS, along the stretch of highways 55 and 62 that lead to the airport, I’ve always been curious about this place. As luck would have it, today Curtis, Lindsay, Amber and I finally had a chance to troll around.
I was a little worried as we wandered about. The area is a mish-mash of public parkland space, and its inverse square: highly restricted airport and military base. In the back of my mind I kept remembering the story of my friend David, who was approached by heavily armed military security for setting up a 4X5 camera and photographing the undersides of over-flying planes here.
razorwire and boulder
As I walked to the end of the park and approached the ominous looking airport fence, I was preparing myself for someone to point a gun at me and ask for my CF card. Such seems to be the attitude toward anyone who takes photographs in the public/private hinterlands of post-W America. I keep spinning around one question: What if the powers that be are actually able to stop everyone from photographing things which are not their friends and family?
I have a hard time imagining a world where everyone has been stripped of the (psychologically) externalizing practice of documenting something, someplace. What would the world be like if we were never able to expect a type of documentary truth in our lives that has to come from something like photography? I’m left thinking of Ray Bradbury’s Farenheit 451… a world where the physical record of an idea in book form is illegal… everyone is caught up in their own perceptions as truth.
debris
A few more photos are posted at my FLICKR page.