I will never not make this picture when I'm home.
#004
I’m from Chattaroy, a small town in Mingo County, West Virginia. The county seat, Williamson, is just under four miles away and was once a thriving coal town in its heyday. Once dubbed “The Heart of the Billion Dollar Coalfield,” it’s now a shell of its former self.
On Third Avenue stands the Cinderella Theatre. It opened in 1921 and was one of a few theaters in town before it closed in 1984. I saw my first movie there in 1979 at age 4 (The Amityville Horror…I know, right?). Sometime after 9/11, GOD BLESS AMERICA appeared on the marquee. I made my first picture of the sign in July 2008.
Since then, I’ve been pretty intentional about stopping in town whenever I’m in Williamson or driving through town to make this picture. I live just over an hour away now but my work takes me through Williamson one day a week, so I usually stop to make a picture in the morning. If there isn’t time on the way, I’ll stop on the way back. I’ve lost count of how many pictures I’ve made at this point.
Last year, I made 34 pictures of the sign. If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll see this pop up in my story when I drive through there. At some point, I started making both vertical and horizontal versions to fit both Instagram stories and my preferred (most of the time) horizontal/landscape format.
Surely by now, you’re asking yourself, “Why?” Why make the same picture over and over and over again? I’ve thought about this through the years and where I’ve landed is that someday the letters, the marquee, the building will all be gone. The simple message GOD BLESS AMERICA has meant/will mean different things to different people over time. Seeing the seasons change in the background, how the light presents itself at different times of the day and year sometimes reveals details I’ve missed in other photographs.
Repetition can be meditative and investigative but I never find it boring. There are different vehicles parked on Third Avenue. Sometimes there are people on the sidewalk. Christmas decorations appear on the guy wires. Light always shows up differently. The practice of returning here is grounding to me and I’m interested in how things change over time. How I’ve photographed this sign has changed over time, too. I’ve worked with a number of different cameras over the years, each one lending its own interpretation of the scene.
One day, I’ll pull up, get out of my truck, and the sign will be gone. I don’t really know what I’ll do then, how I’ll feel, but I do know I’ll be thankful for the years of documenting this space, how it helped connect me to place, and for how I got to see it.
Do you have a place, person, or thing you photograph repetitively?
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GOD BLESS AMERICA (and the world).
Roger
I’ve enjoyed seeing you post this scene over time. Repetitive photo projects are really interesting to me. I took photos of a pair of trees on the Lake Michigan shoreline for years. While the subject is the same, every photo is different. I only stopped when they succumbed to bluff erosion and tipped over the edge. Nice in a way to have that end point decided for me.
Keep making your photos!
The value of repetition is akin to meditation. Especially, when we look and listen. Another essential human quality in jeopardy.
Thanks for posting.