The Old With The New @ New U Street

Cognitive that in order to move forward or simply to gain a better understanding of the present one most know something about the past, in the process of my ongoing Cityscape, Architectural & Industrial Photography I've always made it a point to capture, document and record The Old With The New. It is with that understanding and hindsight that Out With Old & In With The New - Near Southeast DC Development represents the first installment of my Fall 2006 exhibition series.

The above photo of the Visio Condos was taken on Monday evening, 25 September 2006. I began my documentation of the Shaw area of Washington DC on 21 June 2005. Since then there have been so many changes in the area, it is my hope that I will return in the next few weeks to capture more of the old with the new.

Capitol Quarter emerges from the former Capper/Carrollsburg Projects

I began my Capper/Carrollsburg documentary project on Thanksgiving Monday, 29 November 2004 when during a photo assignment that I'd meet with Anu Yadav pertaining to a subsequent article in the 30 December 2004 issue of the Washington Spark by Judy Lem entitled Resisting a Local Diaspora: The Fight for Housing and for History in Arthur Capper and Carrollsburg.

Anu Yadav had written, produced and performed in a one woman play Capers at www.CapersThePlay.com which and not unlike my documentary project "This is for Black Men Who've Contemplated Suicide When That Rainbow ... Was Just Too Much!" was developed in a similar style as have been the plays developed and produced by Anna Deveare Smith.

A few days after my Yadav collaboration when I would return to the Arthur Capper to deliver photos to some of the subjects that I had captured just a few days before ... I was a bit taken back ... when I'd find them in the midst of moving. And had I arrived a half hour later I would have missed them, in accordance with the Capper Carrollsburg tenant relocation program.

And though I would not return to the Capper/Carrollsburg Community until June 2005 seldom have I passed through or have thought of the Arthur Capper Projects without reflecting on that Thursday or Friday evening, after Thanksgiving, when I found Brenda, Mechelle and Kia in the midst of moving. Or the many times, over the years before, that white friends would ask me if I could fetch drugs for them from 'The Projects'.

On Saturday, 14 October 2006, the Arthur Capper Projects would emerge from the gound as Capitol Quarter.

Connecticut Avenue Dupont Circle Underpass Revitalization

Since the first week of May 2006 revitalization of the Connecticut Avenue Dupont Circle Underpass has been underway. Construction on the roadway and tunnel occurs Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. until 10 p.m and sometimes on Saturday. Revitalization of Connecticut Avenue between N and R streets, in Northwest, including upgrades in electrical and sewer lines is scheduled for completion in February 2007, weather permitting.

Q14, One Year Ago Today

It was one year ago today on 4 October 2005 that I began documenting the construction process of the then future condominiums at the northwest corner of Q and 14th Streets in the Logan Circle area of WDC. Which some months later I'd come to know as the Q14. One year later on Wednesday morning, 4 October 2006, and in the process of curating a Logan Circle Under Reconstruction Photographic Exhibition I'd return to The Q14 and capture the architectural development as opposed to Men At Work. Since then I've taken more than a passing interest in the architectural style of The Q14 Residences as well as other projects of Fred Bahrami and as a result will now embark on an ongoing pictorial project that will focus on the Fred Bahrami Collection.