About an Hour: Down and Up (Government Center Steps, Boston, 3,120 exposures from 3:11 to 4:13 pm, March 20, 2022)

About an Hour is a series of photographs of a large staircase at Government Center, Boston. The project consists of two composite photos and 123 pendants derived from the main photo.  One main photo shows only people going down the stairs and facing the camera. The other main photo shows only people going up the stairs with their backs to the camera. The pendants show each figure in isolation, and they are named by the moment I tripped the shutter. The main composites make a generalization. The pendants show the particular.

Each figure in the photos remains in its real, original place. I change nothing. I simply decide what to keep in and what to leave out. The result is both a true record of an hour and an interpretation of it. The camera simply records what’s in front of it, and the moments couldn’t be more ordinary. But to my way of thinking, no one moment is ever typical or repeatable. Each moment holds a mystery, some poetry, some comedy--and lots of tragedy because it is gone as soon as it arrives. The camera can’t arrest the tragedy, of course, but it preserves the mystery.