Western Tour 1981

July 3, 2010 10:41 PM

Western Tour 1981. (Prev; via.)
posted by jjray (16 comments total)

This appears to be a not-too-impressive flickr set. What am I missing?
posted by sanko at 10:56 PM on July 3, 2010

My inner cynic keeps vacillating between "I'll bet half of those meadows are subdivisions now" and "Holy high-waisted denim, Batman!"

These are good pics, and I'm sure are meaningful memories for those involved. Not getting any context from the descriptions, I find myself wondering what the same places look like today.
posted by Graygorey at 11:04 PM on July 3, 2010

It's a glimpse of someone's perfectly ordinary life, from 30 years ago. I find it interesting, at least, but then I've an interest in ephemera.
posted by titus n. owl at 11:04 PM on July 3, 2010

I like em. And I too hope I'm not looking at landscapes now ruined in some way.
posted by Skygazer at 11:17 PM on July 3, 2010

These sorts of pictures always make me feel a bit sad.

These people are in their sixties now.
posted by killdevil at 11:32 PM on July 3, 2010

I think it's pretty cool.

This photo in particular is interesting. Goofing on obsolescence in an obsolete medium.
posted by clockzero at 11:37 PM on July 3, 2010 [2 favorites]

These pictures, are not ironic. Marty Stouffer Wild America.
posted by stbalbach at 11:52 PM on July 3, 2010

These are what I think memories look like—faded, oftentimes oversaturated, sometimes dark around the edges. Details that get lost in the corners where you weren't looking directly. Mimics of how you remember things, not what you remember.

I'm reminded of a junk shop where I'd sift through mountains of photos people had sold clearly by the shoebox, probably only keeping the snapshots with mom and dad in them. Were the boxes hard to part with? Were they just eating space at the top of a closet? I liked to construct pictures of how the Kodachromes got there. I rarely bought anything; I should have taken them out by the ton.

This is the most serene thing I've seen all day. Best viewed to early Blue States.
posted by secret about box at 12:02 AM on July 4, 2010 [3 favorites]

You don't get it- these were shot last year by hipsters with Dianas.
Pffft.
posted by Casimir at 12:20 AM on July 4, 2010

Reminds me of some pictures my elderly landlady showed me 10 years ago when I was in school in northern California. Her husband, a by-then nearly blind physicist and tinkerer, had shot family and vacation photos on large-format slide film with a stereo camera, to be viewed with homebuilt Viewmaster-like viewer made of Bakelite, tiny brass screws and surplus military lenses. We'd stumbled on a box of these glass slides, each a pair of images sandwiched between window glass and held together with yellowing tape, on a shelf in a leaky backyard shed. The pics went back to the 40's, when they'd first been dating after meeting at Berkley. There were shots of remote parts of national parks and the still-recognizable shoreline of a nearby town, but the most jarring was one of my landlady, around 20 years old and very pretty, smiling at the camera at close range with a horse nearby. To alternately peer at that 3-D image in the little black box, and at the arthritic and wrinkled but still smiling woman choosing slides for me, was... well, it was a privilege.

I'm definitely on the 'old pics are cool' side of this.
posted by jon1270 at 3:46 AM on July 4, 2010 [3 favorites]

These people are in their sixties now.

If this makes you sad, the next thirty or forty years are going to be tough for you.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 6:09 AM on July 4, 2010 [4 favorites]

You don't get it- these were shot last year by hipsters with Dianas.

I don't know what a "Diana" is, because I'm not so invested in hating "hipsters" that I apparently am what I hate. I mean, is nothing weird to anyone about knowing all the inside lingo of this group that is ostensibly looked down upon?

I will continue pointing this shit out until this dumb trend dies.
posted by DecemberBoy at 8:31 AM on July 4, 2010

A 'Diana' is a lo-fi film camera that is often used to create dreamy old-timey images by today's photographers.

May your pointing out of shit bring you much joke-getting and stuff.

Thanks for keeping the streets safe, bud.
posted by Casimir at 8:51 AM on July 4, 2010

Western states? Nebraska? Does not compute.
posted by humboldt32 at 9:47 AM on July 4, 2010

It's the westernmost state to have a Springsteen album named after it, which has to be worth something.
posted by arto at 2:18 PM on July 4, 2010

humboldt32: "Western states? Nebraska? Does not compute."

If you live on the east coast Ohio is a western state to you. Nebraska might as well be Alaska.
posted by octothorpe at 7:51 PM on July 4, 2010