SOME PHOTOS OF THAT DAY
6,754 POLAROIDS DATED IN SEQUENCE
Finally a book of the massively popular Polaroid art and website of Jamie Livingston
I was idly flicking through blogs when I stumbled upon an intriguing website, a collection of Polaroid photographs. Gradually I began to realize that there was one for every day between March 1979 and October 1997. There was no way of telling who they belonged to, no commentary or captions, just the photos, arranged month by month like contact sheets. There was a sense, too, that I was not supposed to be there, browsing through these snaps of friends and family, of baseball games and picnics, but they were funny and moving.
–Johnny Dee, The Guardian
Some Photos of That Day, an internet phenomenon the world over is now a book. Intended as a website for friends of the photographer, the site went viral in 2008 and has since been viewed by tens of millions of people, who find that the photographs resonate with their lives in a deeply personal way.
Jamie Livingston, photographer, filmmaker, circus performer, accordion player, and New York Mets fan was a pre-Instagram visionary. He died on his forty-first birthday leaving behind hundreds of friends and a collection of over 6,754 photographs chronologically organized and neatly stored in a fruit of the month club box and three suitcases.
Livingston started taking a Polaroid every day a few weeks before he graduated from Bard College in 1978. He continued until the day he died of cancer. In between he lived a full life, met people, traveled the world and made 6,754 Polaroid SX-70 photos.
Many of the photos depict life in Lower Manhattan, Jamie’s travels as a circus performer and filmmaker, a surprising number of famous people, elephants, accordions, the people in his life and the beauty of the ordinary.
After Livingston died, his friend Hugh Crawford, a photographer, made a website of the Polaroids. Within days of its soft launch in 2008, it was accidentally discovered by Chris Higgins of Mental Floss, who shared the link with his large following. Higgins is now at work on documentary about the project.
Some Photos of that Day is a vivid and comprehensive collection of all of Livingston’s Polaroids with an informative and moving afterward by Crawford. A gorgeously produced book, at 780 pages, it weighs 11 pounds, and sells for a very reasonable $95.
There seems to be no end to the interest in Livingston’s work as new people discover his Polaroids every day. In addition to this book and a forthcoming documentary by Chris Higgins, a television series about Jamie’s life is being developed by producer Linda Schaeffer. Livingston’s work and website has been written about in the New York Times, The Guardian, Fox News, Mental Floss, Vice and many other media sources.