I’ve been putting a lot of work into my photography project lately. Mom called me this morning to tell me about a recent Washington Post article (Bugmenot). It’s a fascinating article, and I intend to email the reporter to discuss my project with him: I suspect he might be interested.
It’s an interesting read for a couple reasons. First, he went out and interviewed people, and those people made the exact points that I’ve been raising. A few examples:
Norma Newpol: “To us, who have known the difference, it’s distressing.”
The precautions, Kincaid said, create the impression that “Washington, D.C., is open but it’s closed. You can go here and there, but the sites that are important are bottled up.”
“Almost everyone visits Washington, D.C. It’s our mecca; we go to connect with our country,” [Matthew Urbanski] said. “We don’t want the message to be, unwittingly, one of hunkering down.”
The article also gave updates on what’s been going on in D.C. since my photos, and, in some cases, explanations as to what exactly had been going on. For example, the barriers at the White House were for construction, but it was construction on new security measures. Some of the projects, like that around the Capitol Building or the Washington Monument, are designed to create security measures that will make it difficult or impossible to get near the monument or building. It’s a disturbing trend.
I need a little longer to process the information and reread the article a few more times. Then, I’ll incorporate it into my project, probably only after contacting the article’s author. There’s hope yet for my project.