PDP #191: St. Clair West, 2008

I always get a bit of a thrill when I leaf back through my photo archives - around seventeen thousand pieces in thirty-six gigabytes, going back to 2003, so it takes a hell of a lot of leafing sometimes - and find a photograph that, for some reason or another, can no longer be taken. It's a reminder that the world around us, however stable it may seem at a look, is nevertheless in flux. Take this photo of St. Clair Avenue West, which I took in the beginning of August 2008. The completion of right-of-way construction there was still more than a year away. It would not be possible to take this photograph anymore, and I feel as if that makes it important.

Granted, 2008 doesn't exactly feel like history. Nevertheless, it's every bit as inaccessible to us as 1908, or 2008 BCE. It's not as if we can hop back there for a larf if we feel like it - we have to build the time machine first, you know.

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