As an academic, you often don't get a lot of choice where you end up. Often you end up somewhere not knowing exactly how or why you arrived there. I knew very little about Windsor when D took a job here and my first visit to Windsor was a house hunting trip in May 2000. We had 48 hours to buy a house and we managed it in 24. On our last day in town I stood in the middle of Willistead Park, surveyed my new city and imagined our new life. Something about that new spring day made me think "I'm going to be very happy here." For whatever reason, I've been happy in Windsor since the moment our moving van arrived. "It will wear off," a friend told me but it never has. I talk to a lot of people about why I love Windsor and why I've been so happy here; some nod incredulously, others know exactly what I'm talking about. There are too many reasons to discuss here but one of the reasons I love this city is the existence of creative, visionary ventures like Broken City Lab. Their current initiative "Things Worth Saving" where they encourage Windsorites to "venture out into the city and take five photographs that showcase what makes our city “worth saving.” These photographs will be turned into a series of postcards that will be mailed out to other cities across the country to prompt a discussion around the differences between how Windsor is viewed by its residents versus how Windsor is viewed by people from outside the city."
They asked for five photographic responses to the following criteria:
1) Someone you’d hate to see leave
2) Something inspiring
3) Somewhere that made you feel something important
4) Somewhere you know you’ll always find a familiar face
5) Something with potential
I'll post my initial responses to these five questions below; I'm not quite certain I'm done taking photos for this (I expect not) and I've not decided which of these images I'll select but here are my preliminary shots. Stay tuned. If you're in Windsor, I encourage you to go for a walk about think about the things worth saving.
2 comments:
Reading what you have to say about Windsor, and looking at your beautiful photographs just warms the cockles of my heart! As a native-Windsorite, and a proud Windsor girl, I'm always having to defend my hometown and my pride to people who think Windsor is the "armpit of Canada". And yet, I know multiple people who, like you, moved here and fell in love. Windsor, and Essex County too, have something special, and something unique to share with the rest of the country, and I'm super pumped about this project.
Thanks, Heidi - Windsor loves you too! :-)
What a beautiful idea. It also makes me think about my current setting with new eyes given that I'm not exactly in love with the town. However, perhaps what we all need is to look at the place we live with this lens. We might start to care and take better care of each other. Thanks, Heidi!
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