'People's History of Pittsburgh' captures everyday moments through photos
If Pittsburgh is, indeed, a family, then consider this its album — just photos of you and 300,000 of your closest relatives.
Last year, the Carnegie Museum of Art's Hillman Photography Initiative invited Pittsburghers to submit their own private, decades-old photographs for the first volume of a new photo book titled “A People's History of Pittsburgh.”
The project is intended to illustrate how simple, everyday photographs can collectively recount a broader history of the city's cultural roots, starting and ending with the inhabitants who have cultivated it through generations.
“I think of the book as a poetic stream of consciousness rather than a conscientious historical survey of events,” says editor Melissa Catanese.
Catanese, a photographer from Pittsburgh-based photo bookstore Spaces Corners in Troy Hill, approached the museum with the idea for the project, along with her co-editor Ed Panar.
“People asked us at first, ‘Do you really want to see my family photographs?' ” says Catanese of the photo-scanning events at the museum, which began last spring.
Roughly 1,500 submitted photographs, for which no stipulations were given, displayed pervasive sentimental themes of domestic life, something Catanese and Panar wanted to accentuate.
“A picture is worth a thousand words,” the old adage says, but it could be argued that a picture is worth whatever the viewer ascribes it.
Catanese and Panar believe and hope that photos of everyday moments — from summer picnics and music recitals to first Christmases and soldiers returning from war — provide readers a reflection of and pathway to reconnect with their own memories.
“When you look at an image, you project your own world experiences onto what you're viewing,” Catanese says of how she hopes readers will experience the images.
“There's at least one photo in this book that will trigger a response for everyone,” Panar says.
Each of the photographs, ranging from modern-day photos to 1970s color Polaroids and black-and-white portraits dating to the 1880s, are stripped of captions and context, allowing viewers to re-imagine their own past and “consider that any history begins with what is revealed and what is hidden.”
The soft-cover photo book is accompanied by the project's second portion, an online archive containing every photo submitted for consideration. Each entry is accompanied with a caption from its owner recounting the narrative behind the moment.
The book is the first volume in what the photographers say they hope to be a continuing series, adding that they believe they have just scratched the surface of Pittsburgh's untold visual history.
To view the online archive or contribute your own photos, visit nowseethis.org/peopleshistory. Copies of the book can be purchased online at SpacesCorners.com.
Matthew Zabierek is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. Reach him at 412-320-7948 or mzabierek@tribweb.com.
