Let's Help Hugh!

UPDATE: Funded! By the skin of its teeth, as my father used to say. It surpassed the goal by just a few hundred dollars at the last minute.

You really should read the writeup at the Kickstarter site. It's an incredible story, good in the short version, the medium version, and the long version.

"Are they six and a half thousand images? Well obviously they are that, but do they stand alone individually or do they tell a story? Is it a memento mori or thousands of celebrations of life in all of its wonderful tentative mess? One story or six and a half thousand declarations of now? The stories Jamie tells or that hundreds of other people tell and how can they all be true at once?"
—From the project description

 

You probably recognize the name of Hugh Crawford, a polymath of great brilliancy whose comments are often the among the most delightful we publish. Hugh knows more weird stuff than anyone I ever came across.

Hugh is the custodian of his late friend Jamie Livingston's Polaroid a day project—Jamie took a Polaroid SX-70 photograph every single day from the last day of March 1979 to the last day of his life, October 25 1997, his 41st birthday.

Hugh is trying to Kickstart the publication of a book...

...And it's the last day to help. In fact the Kickstarter is in its last hours. I just caught up with this just now; I've been really bad about email recently. He already has $24,256 but the project isn't funded yet.

Hurry! Pitch in what you can? TOP will donate $200 from the subscriber's fund.

Hugh Crawford in Jamie Livingston's epic Polaroid-a-day project

Here's the link again. It's a fascinating project anyway, one we've featured several times, and well worth looking into even if you don't have the spare bucks to kick in.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2017 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Comments

[hugh crawford]

Thanks Mike
I'd just like to point out that this thing is massive, like please don't sue me if you drop it on a small child or pet massive. The book will be hardbound 10x13 1/2 inches with 752 pages. (255mm x 343mm in the rest of the world) and about 9 pounds or 4 kilos. It turns out that there are good reasons that almost all books are about half that size at the largest.

In spite of that I'm trying to keep the cost at what a college student like Jamie when he started the project might be able to pay, the kickstarter price is $53 plus shipping. but I'm hoping some big "name in the front of the book" donors pop up in the next nine hours.

That said, if you buy your photo books by the pound this thing's a bargain. I think the pictures and story are pretty nice too.

[Oskar Ojala]

Looks good, didn't have time to get on it, but seems the project just got backed!

[Thomas Turnbull]

Thanks very much Mike!

This is a project close to my heart and your heads up alerted me in time to help. Kickstarter just wrote this morning saying that the project HAS been fully funded and will go ahead as so many had hoped. 272 people signed up after I did so it was a last minute deal (maybe even thanks to you!)

Thanks again and be encouraged,

Tom Turnbull

[Michael Matthews]

Congratulations -- there's little doubt your blog posting made the difference. Look at the amount raised in those few hours versus the pace to that point. I posted the Kickstarter campaign to Facebook. In itself, that means nothing since there are only two other people associated as friends with that account. But -- one of those is a professional photographer and teacher of same while the other is a photographer/artist whose day job is at the Smithsonian. By immediately showing up on their Facebook pages and the pages of those who follow them the reach can be impressive. Multiply that by all of the TOP readers who did the same thing and it's pretty clear you blog is the lever which can move the world. At least a little.

[David Cope]

Awesome! Looking forward to seeing the book. I miss Polaroid film - in particular 55PN, I have a few SX70 snapshots but really admired the art that was produced in a book that Polaroid used to regularly publish to illustrate it's products. Beautifully printed. (Sorry, can't remember the title).

Incidentally, using Impossible Project film over the same time span would cost approx £15,000. Or about £67 per month. (At £17.99 per 8 shots). And that's if you can nail it in one shot per day!

Over 18 years that's one hell of a commitment both photographically and financially. Kudos!

OOOPDN - One camera, One Film, One shot, Per Day for N years.

[hugh crawford]

"Over 18 years that's one hell of a commitment both photographically and financially. Kudos!

OOOPDN - One camera, One Film, One shot, Per Day for N years."

More like One camera, One Film, One shot, One lifetime. However Jamie wore out several cameras, not so much by making 6500 exposures but buy simply wearing the cameras out by carrying them around 24/7 for 18 years. He's the only person I know of who even wore out one of those Leica tabletop tripods, along with several camera bags, and a couple of electronic flashes. Those cameras weren't particularly small. Huge compared to a 35mm camera much less an iPhone. The film was about a dollar a shot in 1980, adjusted for inflation the Impossible film is cheaper now.