THE CASE FOR REINCARNATION
By MICHAEL PERKINS
ONE OF THE HALLMARKS OF A MATURE SOCIETY is a healthy respect for its own history. When a nation is busy a-borning, doing anything “for the ages”, from physical infrastructure to laws to philosophy, can get lost in the blur of just…becoming. The dust of Now is just swirling too madly to get a good view of what can, or should, be made to last. Change is so rapid that it becomes its own religion. Preserving, protecting, salvaging things….that comes later.
American, a country that has always surged forward too quickly to allow ourselves much of a backwards glance, was always more about building than keeping. Things that became outmoded or obsolete were quickly consigned to the national scrapheap. As a result, we only recently have begun to place a premium on conservation, on re-purposing our past. And nowhere is that more evident than our cities, where signs that read “soon, on this site” usually mean that something old must first be destroyed. We have taken a long time learning to give things second lives. Including ourselves.
The foyer of the restored Citizens Building, a 1917 bank-turned-condo community in Columbus, Ohio.
I have a special affection for the urban spaces that get “saved”, that are lucky enough to survive the wrecking ball and shine forth anew, escaping the fate of so many things we mistakenly label “improvements”. Not everything old is immortal, certainly, but not everything new is magical, either. I love to take my camera to renovations, grand re-openings, conversions. It is a great privilege to see, in a place’s original design or materials, what its creators did. In the case of the above image, taken inside a 1917 bank in Columbus, Ohio that’s been recently reborn as luxury urban condominiums, one sees many original features that brought beauty and elegance to a financial institution that work perfectly well, thank you very much, as features in a residential building. I document these small victories because they are still too rare. I long to demonstrate, for as many eyes as I can, that “past” need not mean “dead”. As our country, or any young country, grows up, it’s easier to see what seemed invisible when we were young and in a hurry. That’s true of ourselves no less than of our creations.
RE-BRANDING
By MICHAEL PERKINS
CITIES POSSESS THEIR OWN PROOF-OF-LIFE RHYTHMS, a steady cadence of dying and rebirthing, of collapse and resurrection. Like a sleeping body where you have to look carefully to see the passing of breath, towns of every type inhale and exhale, even if we are not paying close attention. One building comes crashing down, and we complain about the noise and mess. Another building rises on the same site, and we crab about how the sidewalk was re-routed. We learn not to see our cities breathing.
Photographers are people who teach themselves to see things that even they have, too often, passed by without noticing. When they preserve a moment between eras in cities, that’s a very valuable function. We document the old things we once valued; we chronicle the new things what we hope will have staying power. And our best pictures of cities can often be the precise moment that the past hands the baton on to the future. These are images of faith, hope, aspiration.
The proudest moments for a city is when it finally learns the value to be found in refitting the past, of carrying notes or accents of bygone days into new uses, slowing the tidal wave of obsolescence, if only a little. Sometimes we actually wake up to the fact that not everything old deserves to be swept aside, that there is such a thing as enduring value. Strive to be there when you see it happen.
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