Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Christmas in NJ [dec 92 - jan 93]

This is another project done by Stephen Altobello. Im really enjoying this guys projects a lot

Click on link to see the website and more pics:
Back Story:
I graduated film school in the third week of December, 1992. I went home to the suburbs of southern New Jersey, where after four years away in New York, I was both an insider and an outsider. Feeling restless and aimless, I decided to document the faces of the area, as well as the nativity scenes and holiday lawn fixtures that had fascinated me my whole life.

During the day, I visited diners, marts, bowling alleys, skating rinks, dance halls, etc. Every photo I took was with the kind permission of the subjects. Also, I snuck up on random lawns and porches, getting as close as possible to the faded Jesus, Mary and Josephs. I took hundreds of pictures and developed them as 3x5 prints at the local ShopRite. At night, I’d lay them out, making the diptychs and triptychs you see on this site. Not a single picture was taken with a conscious idea to pair it with another.

I bought a photo album—-a scrapbook, really-—from a Montgomery Ward, affixed the pictures via FunTak, and finished it a few days into 1993. I never made any changes to it, although I’d pull it out every holiday season to show new friends and co-workers. Typically, their response was a mixture of “Whut?!” and “...Whoa,” which made me wish this could reach a wider audience.

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