The Amazing and One-of-a-Kind Jamie Livingston Project

You probably remember the Jamie Livingston Project, the ultimate "PAD" (picture a day) project...possibly in all of the history of photography. Jamie Livingston took a Polaroid SX-70 photo every day of his life starting in 1979 during his last two months at Bard College, and ending at his death on his 41st birthday.

In a true labor of love and as a great devotion to the memory of their friendship, Jamie's great good friend (and ours), Hugh Crawford, who has been a part of the TOP Commentariat for years, had the pictures published as a book. That's right, all 6,754 of them. The project was right at the outer edge of what the printer could accommodate, and the book is formidable: it's 780 pages, 12x15x3 inches, and it weighs 11 pounds.

Let's just say you're not going to ingest it all in one sitting.

And if you can't go for the big kahuna, there is an elegant little sample book that includes a number of Jamie's photographs that include the Twin Towers of the now-perished World Trade Center. It's tiny, slight, and much cheaper, so you can have a sample without having to deal with the 11-pounder.

The big book is $150 list, $125 on Amazon, and $95 for Hugh's friends, and you can have it for even less. As he writes:

Here's the link to the direct sales site for the books.

Totally bananas and off-topic: According to USA today, which listed the top misspelled words by State in its coverage of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, 'bananas' is the most  misspelled word in New Mexico, but the most misspelled word in Wisconsin is 'Wisconsin.'

So the secret coupon code for TOP readers is 'top hat,' because who can remember how to spell bananas anyway?

TOP readers get 10 dollars off of each copy of Some Photos of That Day: 6754 Polaroids Dated in Sequence and an additional 10 dollars goes to Mike's Regrettable Weather Re-Wiring Recompensatory Wishlist, or the more easily remembered MRWRWRW.

The books are also available on Amazon at higher prices for people who insist on buying on Amazon but there is no advantage that I can think of.

This is not a project for the faint of heart, on any level (now the race is to see if Hugh can break even), but it's really unique in the history of the medium. Quixotic, yes, but I think it's a project worth supporting. One of photography's true epics....

Mike
(Thanks to Hugh)

Original contents copyright 2018 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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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

ALP0A: "I'm so delighted to see this. I've been a reader here for several years now Mike, but I must confess I've never left a comment. I think it was a comment by Hugh on here himself which led me to Jamie's story several years ago and in turn inspired me to begin my own daily recording. I went through a bad divorce and wasn't getting regular contact with my children and this was a way of nulling the pain, forcing me outside but also leaving a record so my children could see who I really was. Thankfully I'm now in daily contact with them and they are growing up wonderfully and also love the original story. I've just ordered my copy and look forward to receiving it. I promise to try and comment more now. I do love this site. David."

Comments

[Nigli]

Hugh, can I buy it from you and have it shipped to Germany?

[Oskar Ojala]

Have to note that the price per kilo (or pound) is excellent.

[David]

I suspect the shipping costs to Australia could buy me a small car.

[hugh crawford]

For those who are wondering about shipping, I have worked out amazingly reasonable shipping rates
For example:
For shipping in the USA
USPS - Media Mail (5-9 working days) $10.61
USPS - Priority Mail (3-5 working days) $16.90
Germany and most of Europe
DHL eCommerce - Parcel Direct LAX (12-17 working days) $38.34
FedEx - International Priority (3-4 working days) $85.55
Great Brittian
DHL eCommerce - Parcel Priority LAX (12-15 working days) $44.00
FedEx - International Priority (3-4 working days) $85.55
Australia
DHL eCommerce - Parcel Direct LAX (22-27 working days) $66.00
FedEx - International Priority (3-4 working days) No additional taxes to be paid at delivery.: $102.57
DHL gets there eventually. it gets forwarded through several different systems on the way and can take a long time but it's remarkably cheap and I have not had any damage claims yet.

I am shipping through a shipping consolidator and in addition to the DHL rate which is simply unavailable to the public, the FedEx rates are about %25 of what you would pay if you walked into a FedEx store.

Note that the book comes in an attractive "shipping box" that is intended to protect the book and can get damaged, which is it's function. All of the international shipping options put the box inside bubble wrap and then inside another box which protects the shipping box. The same is true of the express shipping in the USA. The media mail option in the USA puts the shipping box inside bubble wrap which means that the "shipping box" sometimes gets it's corners bashed. If you are the sort of person who saves packaging ( and the shipping box has a pretty cool design ) then the extra $7 for the express mail in the USA might be a good idea, although in my experience Media Mail has proved to be pretty safe.

Despite the warnings of the shipping calculator, in most countries, there is no tax or duties on account of it being a book and falling under the threshold of the local VAT tax, but I make no guarantees.

[Kenneth Tanaka]

My sincere salute to Hugh for completing such an enormous publishing project! I hope it proves to be a success for you.

[Dennis Ng]

@Hugh Crawford: related to your post, there seems to be another option call SFExpress (I guess is the china one which wonder as why you have an china mailing company, is the book printed in Shenzhen).

Well, other than that and probably not on this site but just in case other reader encounter the same issue, it seems your web site process is a bit odd. I click through PayPal and then there is warning about strange thing like which region I am living in "Billing Region is not valid. Please enter one of the following: Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, New Territories". Being living in a box of 20km x 20km place, it is strange why it matters but then there is no way I can update my region in your web site.

[Dave Polaschek]

I know how to spell banananananas. I just don't know how to stop!

[Stan B.]

Congratulations to Jamie and Hugh both for undertaking and accomplishing such a massive commitment!