Toronto Street Postcard ca. 1910

This vintage postcard is one of the oldest in my collection. I posted it today because it was mailed 103 years ago on March 26, 1910. The card shows a downtown scene on the corner of Toronto Street (or 3rd Street) in Medicine Hat, Alberta. The image is likely from years earlier, as the street became increasingly built up around 1910 and vehicles started to become present. As with all of these old postcards though, finding the exact print date is tough.

What's really neat about this postcard in particular is that it highlights the historical storyline of the area. The man who wrote this message was sending it back to his mother and family in Nebraska to let them know that he found land and got 320 acres. According to my research all homesteading plots were surveyed as quarter sections of 160 acres, so this guy acquired two sections. I love these old postcards with stories attached to them, and for good measure I photographed a comparison shot of the street today. 

The same view on 3rd Street ca. 2013

St. John's Church Interior: Part 2

The following is a continuation of my photo set from inside of the historic St. John's Presbyterian Church in downtown Medicine Hat, Alberta.

Searching Salvation Update #1

It's been months since I last looked at anything to do with Searching Salvation. The project ended up on the back burner in 2012 as Around the Hat continued to expand and the response grew. As I mentioned in my first post of 2013 though, one of my goals for this year is to finally see this memorial / personal documentary / video poem about the death of my friend Dave and our visit to Salvation Mountain completed.

Looking back at images from our visit to the California desert in 2009 and our following road trip in 2010, the nostalgia trip has been really powerful. Especially after my break from the project, I feel like I'm looking at everything with a renewed sense of euphoria that echoes what the original experience was like. I've almost entirely re-edited my library of Salvation Mountain images for the project as a result. I really just wanted to share that I'm making progress once again and the importance of this project hasn't been lost on me. I'm building on what I already had, and approaching portions of the edit fresh and with greater ambition. 

There's still a lot to do, and I feel a weight from the expectations I've put on myself from what I want to see the finished project become. No matter what though, the goal is now wrapping up this project and finally debuting it by late August / early September 2013 - the 2 year anniversary of Dave's death and coincidentally, the 4 year anniversary of our original road trip. Stay tuned for more as Searching Salvation continues to get back up to speed this spring.