I stumbled on this girl and her brother having a blast with a sheet of plastic after a long day in Cappadocia last summer. It reminded me of this scene from American Beauty. I hope you find it as beautiful as I did. It still warms my heart.
This boy sat for a portrait exactly as I found him. He was selling watermelons that were bigger than he was in Kumkapi, the Istanbul neighborhood where I lived for a month this summer.
"One thing about pioneers that you don’t hear mentioned is that they are invariably, by their nature, mess-makers. They go forging ahead, seeing only their noble, distant goal, and never notice any of the crud and debris they leave behind them. Someone else gets to clean that up and it’s not a very glamorous or interesting job." - Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Leases in Boston typically start on September 1. That means that on September 1, almost every resident of the student/immigrant neighborhood of Allston moves everything he or she owns from one Allston apartment to another Allston apartment. Double- and triple-parked U-hauls (booked weeks in advance) clog the streets, trashed furniture litters the sidewalks, and landlords and tenants shout obscenities over just about everything.
After moving myself on (or around) moving day four years in a row, I wanted to examine it from a different angle. This is the first draft of my attempt to capture the absurdity that is Moving Day in Boston. I focused on the frustration and exhaustion of moving, and the waste and filth that movers leave behind.