Ode to Jamie Livingston

I’ve been collecting small bits of inspiration and today I found Jamie Livingston, or, rather, found out about Jamie Livingston. He took one Polaroid photograph a day for 18 years, from the time he was a student at Bard to the day he died. Some are missing from the collection, but the ones that remain — and there’s more than 6,000 of them, have been shown in various incarnations.

It’s an amazing, inspiring story and one fitting, I think, to kick off Thanksgiving week. I’m thinking a lot lately — as I’m sure tons of people are — about things for which I am thankful. One of the biggest things are unexpected shots of inspiration, and, in particular, those I know and those I know of who inspire me. I didn’t know about Jamie or his life — even though there’s been a lot written about him, from at the New York Times to a bevy of websites in his honor — but he’s inspired me to think, to look and to consider my own longevity and commitment.

If you’d like to learn more, here are some websites to spend some time on:

Hugh Crawford’s collection of all of Jamie’s Polaroids

Images from the 2007 art show of Livingston’s photographs, as they appeared at Bard College

Another way to view the photos, this time in a flipbook

And here are a couple of my own Polaroids, taken several months ago on walks up the Blue Ridge Parkway and through my West Asheville neighborhood, respectively. My own small shots, posted in his honor.