Spring Break: Digging in!

Week 6

I’ve been a bit overwhelmed by the amount of work I still have to complete, so I really dug into it over Spring Break. I focused on the nine photo albums that captured River Forest’s 1980 Centennial Celebration. I was actually a little bit surprised by how interesting I found it all. I was born and raised in River Forest, so it was very interesting to see how the area has changed over the past few decades. I was particularly interested in the photo album that included an architectural tour of the town. It included old newspaper clippings and photographs of the old school (before it moved to its current location). It also included pictures of the famous houses in River Forest, and as I live next to a Frank Lloyd Wright house, it was interesting to see it appear in the official Architecture Walk. My favorite discovery, however, was the picture of my good friend’s father, complete with the late ‘70’s beard and ‘80’s clothes! My connection to the source material really makes me invested in this project.

I found the process of reviewing, scanning, and documenting the photo albums to be particularly time consuming. First, scanning the photo albums is physically cumbersome. I have to peel back the film from the contents to avoid a glare in the scan, and as the film is often stuck to the contents, I have to be very careful as I do so. Also, the contents (newspaper clippings, pictures, flyers, etc) are not often securely attached (ie glued) to the page, so they tend to move around when I flip them over to scan. As the albums are also quite long, it’s a pretty significant amount of work to get through. By the end of this week, I’ve reviewed, scanned, and documented six of the nine photo albums.