The
final reason I take photographs is to document my site research. Although you
may not take photographs for that reason, I’m egotistical enough to believe
that you might find my process interesting. For that reason, I’m reprinting a
blog post from March 21, 2022. (The book on the Pullman strike has been
completed and is circulating among agents and publishers. The one on the Topaz
Relocation Center is Desert Jewels, published in 2017 using the pen name
Kaye Page and available on Amazon.)
Be
Your Own Photographer
I’m currently
working on a story that takes place in the Pullman neighborhood of Chicago
during the 1894 Pullman strike. I found a number of images online, but since I
live in the Chicago area, I decided to take a field trip and check it out for
myself.
The Pullman factory
is no longer there, although some of the buildings remain. More importantly,
though, the residential parts are much as they were then. I can look at old
photographs, and I did, but they didn’t give me the sense of place I received
from walking the same streets my protagonists did and taking in some of the
same sights they saw every day. Unfortunately, the feeling will eventually
fade, so I try to keep it alive as long as possible through my own photographs.
Here are some I took while walking around
the neighborhood. The one at the beginning of this post shows the wide,
tree-lined streets, which were a drawing point back then as they are now. The
next one shows the type of skilled workers duplex that my protagonists live in.
The rest show, in order, the Greenstone Church my protagonists attend, part of
the old Pullman factory, and the Pullman Hotel.
Fortunately, Pullman is a historic
neighborhood and much of it has been preserved and/or restored. The same isn’t
true of the Topaz War Relocation Center.
Topaz was dismantled and the buildings sold
off after the war, and the last two photos show what it looked like when I
visited on a research trip in 2014. Even though the camp itself was gone, being
there reinforced the photos taken during the war and emphasized the sense of
isolation and desolation the 8,000 inhabitants must have felt.
So if you have the opportunity to go on
location to research your story, be sure to take a camera along.
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