In August we moved Billy into his Freshmen dorm room. Amidst all of chaos of boxes, clothes and extension cords, wrapped very tightly with the swirling emotions of moving our first born into college I looked around his room, from the three decade vantage point of the last time I was involved with this move, and it was really interesting to observe what has changed…and what has not.
I took a lot of pictures my Freshman year. Boxes upon boxes are filled with ‘party pic’ shots. But I also remembered a more intention driven effort, walking up and down the dorm hallway, hauling around my Nikon and Hasselblad, sometimes with flash and sometimes with natural light, to capture images, of what I realized even then, was a very unique moment in time.
The Freshmen dorm room is special. For many it’s the first time they have total control of what goes on the wall. The dorm room does not showcase any dusty AYSO trophies, Lego X-Wing fighters or other artifacts collected, but rarely curated, along the accelerating journey from childhood to adolescence. Just like day one of college, the dorm room is a blank canvas that is adorned only with a contemporary representation of oneself.
Looking at the image of my Freshman dorm desk, some things have not changed in 30+ years. The formica topped desk is still the same size, the walls are cinder block, there’s a wooden three drawer dresser that is pretty much indestructible, and there are only two outlets. As I zoom in, there are things that are now obsolete like a Webster’s dictionary, a box of #10 envelopes, a roll of return address labels, CD’s. On the shelf is my ‘Box of Rain’ book by Robert Hunter (I thought I was a Deadhead), on the edge of the corkboard a Ansel Adams calendar, and, just outside of the crop on this shot, a crushed Bud Light can biplane (yeah, thought that was pretty cool back then too). Those are individual things that combine to represent who I either was, or, who I wanted to be in the Fall of 1992. While that seems like a long time ago, it also just feels like a long slow blink.
From a photography standpoint, it was really interesting to revisit some of my earliest documentary work. Outside of getting better at some of the more technical aspects, if I were to shoot these portraits again today, on several of them, I would not change a thing. Perhaps that is influenced by a fair dose of nostalgia, but I’m okay with that because it’s kind of the whole point in going back into the vault…
I’ll be sharing the images organized, for purposes of presentation, by orientation and crop. More to follow soon!