I?d taken my Leica M9 to Dallas thinking I would come back with tons of great pictures. That was not to be the case. Photography is hard and you have to want to take good pictures, and then you have to be willing to do the work to get those pictures. I wasn?t and I came back from the trip with very few images that I ever want to look at again.
Nevertheless, Dealey Plaza, the location where President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, is something else entirely. It is, almost by some kind of natural or unnatural energy, one of the most eerily amazing places I?ve ever visited in my life.
But the strangeness of the experience of visiting there is compounded due to the ghastly and unacceptable way in which this historical site has been allowed to deteriorate, and also because of how it is presented to those who come to this place to try to absorb something of the terrible events that happened there.
The vibe of Dealey Plaza is so thick that the first thing you may notice upon arriving there is the atmosphere of mayhem and disorder that permeates the place. Remember the moment in Oliver Stone?s JFK when the pigeons bolt from the roof of the Texas School Book Depository? It?s just like that moment.
Dealey Plaza, it seemed to me, is a vortex of negative energy. Soon after we arrived and were standing near where Abraham Zapruder shot his incredible film, up at the bend from South Houston onto Elm, the last corner that President Kennedy would turn in his life, there was the wild screech of brakes and a violent collision. Minutes later there was the sound of an ambulance. Someone had been injured, apparently seriously as it wasn?t long before the ambulance sped past us, right up Elm Street and over the spot where the president was shot. There is an image here that shows that moment.
It?s a bizarre place, and there?s no other way of saying it. And a serious traffic accident was just one of many things, the very real sights and sounds of 2011, which contribute to setting the eerie tone in Dealey Plaza.
The lion?s share of negative vibe in Dealey Plaza, however, isn?t generated by happenstance or traffic accidents. It comes from the fact that the place is in such a miserable state of disrepair that it amounts to a disgrace for the city of Dallas, the state of Texas, and the United States of America.
I live in Los Angeles. In what?s called the slums of Beverly Hills. But what I?m about to say goes for virtually everywhere in Los Angeles. There is more attention paid to the grounds keeping and upkeep and beautification of EVERY apartment building on my street, every street in my neighborhood, and just about every building, house, park, intersection, center divider or median strip, car wash, parking lot, and public restroom than there is at the site of the assassination of the 35th president of the United States.
Paint is chipping badly. Rust stains are everywhere. The grass is trodden over, smashed down to dirt and mud under the feet of visitors. Graffiti covers key components of this historical site including the picket fence behind the Grassy Knoll where some say a second shooter may have fired shots at the president?s motorcade.
But there?s one thing even worse than the disrepair at Dealey Plaza and it is an insult to history and everyone who visits the place as well as to the memory of the slain president and of the events that happened there.
Yes, it is an insult and a disgrace.
But it is also I think a portrait of the future under Corporate Austerian Rule--depraved indifference and disrepair.
*Reportedly the last words spoken to President Kennedy before shots were fired.
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