Do you know what my friends and family just can't get enough of? My parking lot photos. So much so that one on Instagram even illicited this response "This is actuality a nice picture" (although it is debatable wether that photo is actually of a parking lot). Rather than continually writing post after post about my ridiculous attempts to try and drive home without being lured into yet another parking lot, I thought I should round some of them up here. I may indulge in a few anecdotes and thoughts along the way.
So here's that carpark in Silver Spring that I stop in for Peet's coffee on my drive to Baltimore. It's dawning on me that I do indeed appear a little suspicious when photographing these places. This foggy day a couple who were also enjoying their Peet's coffee here rolled down their car window to ask what I was recording and if I was a protestor. This was our intro to a great conversation that touched on art, law, development, nationalities and names. Turns out this parking lot is slated for demolition (my aesthetic is the kiss of death in terms of urban development) and will be moved underground, which is what Errol thought I might be protesting. Also turns out that my name, not the tripe R hyphenated version, the original–Rebecca Rogers–sounds posh, who knew? We discussed urban development, how art and law can intersect and be used to illuminate each other. He could not see the beauty that I was so enthusiastically raving about, what he saw was urban sprawl and rampant redevelopment and he found this depressing. He proposed it might be my rural (not really) irish background that made urban development look like progress to me while his New York background made it seem the inverse (Errol - if you read this please correct me on anything I recall badly). And this conversation with a completely unconnected stranger, that involved agreement and disagreement, where we discussed similarities and differences, this may be the most delightful aspect of the work.
Another parking lot, recently they introduced a fee to park here which keeps it beautifully low on cars. Takoma Park, Maryland.
