Middle East Baltimore

November 2nd, 2009

Interested in documenting a historic part of Baltimore that is seemingly going to be destroyed and the heritage will be lost. He wishes to document it.

There are a lot of ways to present these images. Most of the primary source documents are from relatives of James’ family.

Critique:
William Pace: What is the purpose of just documenting?

James Singewald: I was researching about my grandparent’s shop, then walked around and discovered the area. It has become a classic example of a failed renewal project. I want to document people and retell their memories of the neighborhood.

William Pace: How will you present it?

James Singewald: That is still up in the air. I might want to try and do a book.

Jen Frost Smith: Are these vacant?

James Singewald: Eventually, this is Gay Street and the whole area is called “old town” because it was one of the first settlements in Baltimore. After the riots, it was the first portion of the city a part of the city urban renewal project. It really died when they tore down the high rises – the mall there was specifically tailored to lower income families and when they left – the mall died with it.

Timothy Druckrey: There are many possible projects still. You say every building is unique. Since you are photographing similarity from one building to another, what way are you making every building unique? What kind of project do you want it to be? There’s the subjective story of your grandfather’s history, the civic project, society project, etc… If it is about urban renewal, then it needs a different setting. Decide what your project should be; because it can be unfinished forever. Whenever someone asks a question, you answer with a story. You have to figure out your role. If the purpose is to photograph every building, then photograph every building and print them and see if you are done. Do it and get it over with. The idea of urban transformation was planned (poorly) and yet it still exists – that is a better entry point than to just state that your family owned property. You are going to take hundreds of photos and then you’ll have to decide how to present it since you’ll have spacial limits.

John McNeil: You should take all the images of all the buildings and just have that at least completed.

Darrell Appelzoller: Reminds me of all these building placed together being a collage of – like those posters in NY city of movies that are placed one over the others. Like the building’s history overlapping one over the other.

Craig Kalpakjian / Timothy Druckrey: We don’t want to change the direction of the taking of the photographs and creating a documentary / documentation of the city.

Sunday Ballew: Seems like a ghost town, do people even hang out there?

James Singewald: Yes, but all the stores are closed, there is a lot of drug activity and people still walk around there.

Jen Frost Smith: I still can’t connect with the photographs like the way you describe them. Maybe somehow combining the recordings of the environment. Websites have this context that I’m not sure, but this documentation might not hold up.

Timothy Druckrey: The aesthetics are not the issue, he wants to be/continue his rigorous photographing method and not overcomplicate it with how to layer it.

Joanna White: My problem is just trying to understand why each building is lined up and their perspective/scale and equal compared to each other. Either make them all equal, or if you really wanted to make each building unique, their personas have to shown and photographed differently.

References
“Incarnations of Immortality” by Piers Anthony