Photo by Jamie Livingston - October 31, 1979
Recently I came across a link for a very cool website. A collection of Polaroids, one
per day for 28 years. Who takes photos every day for eighteen years? Photographer
Jamie Livingston. He took a Polaroid photo everyday from March 31, 1979 through
October 25, 1997. In 1979 the photos start with pictures of friends, picnics,
dinners. Some days he doesn’t photograph much, but he takes a picture. Throughout the
1980's you see more family/fun photos, also some glimpses of the
photographer’s filmmaking. He called the project “Photo of the Day” and
presumably planned to exhibit them at some point, had he lived. He died on
October 25, 1997, his 41st birthday.
After Livingston’s death, Hugh Crawford and Betsy Reid put together a public exhibit and website using the photos and called it “PHOTO OF THE DAY:1979-1997 - 6,697 Polaroids, dated in sequence.” The physical exhibit opened in 2007 at the Bertelsmann Campus Center at Bard College (where Livingston started the series, as a student). The exhibit included reprints of every Polaroid and took up a 7ft. x 120ft. foot space.
Jamie Livingston – Self Portrait, just before his death in 1997.