this morning, i came across an ad for a customizable photo journal that answers the question: where were you when obama won the election? (ad for the book, below).
the book is filled with iconic photographs of the president shot by the author/photographer, rick smolan, as well as maps and info-graphics of the election results. but the kicker is that you may customize it by including pictures of yourself amongst smolan's professional shots. according to smolan, "half the people in the room picked up their cameras and took a photo of the television set just as obama won," so he came up with this customizable time capsule book.
the ad was posted in august 2009 and at the time, i believe it was selling for $35 though i just googled up a man selling his customized book for $250 on amazon! i have to say that the fact that there is a market for such time capsules is really surprising... but the more i think about it, i suppose it shouldn't be.
check out this slick video posted on amazon:
though i am definitely not smolan's target audience, i can appreciate the sentiment. when we remember larger events, we always do so from personal perspective. our memories are driven by our personal references to space and time; it is our way of connecting to and coping with the world around us. so it is no doubt that questions in the form of "where were you when...?" are prevalent in the daily world of conversation. and it is common to engage in the question. it's a way of connecting two individuals separated in space to one point in time.
the memories we create are time capsule events. they are a way of reconnecting our future selves to our past selves. the recollection of a memory is like the unveiling of any time capsule event, it can result in revelation but more likely, just some perspective.
No comments:
Post a Comment