Orange County Great Park is Site of Monumental Photography Project
The Orange County Great Park in Irvine, California is under construction, with expected completion in 2015. Today, it is the site of balloon rides, concerts, dances, exhibits and other events to help publicize its presence.
Meanwhile, six photographers are quietly working behind the scenes - photographing the evolving park, documenting its transition from the former El Toro Marine Air Station.
This is their story.
A Photographic Memory
The shooters show up before dawn to catch the first rays of light. They work through the blazing sunshine and stay around to capture pictures by the light of the moon. The six members of The Legacy Project are relentless, photographing the neighborhoods, runways, hangars and distant mountain ranges of the shuttered El Toro Marine Base -- documenting its transition to the Orange County Great Park.
"We felt like archeologists entering a ghost town when we first explored the air station," says one Legacy Project member. "While prowling the base and shooting the officers' homes, backyards and playgrounds, we had a strong sense of the families who had lived there. We saw barbecues, furniture and children’s shoes, and could almost hear the sounds of the people who had worked and played there.
"Our images from that time period depict a hallowed past and a presence of life. We feel a sense of loss as buildings there are leveled, yet look forward to the promise of the Orange County Great Park and feel fortunate to continue photographing there."
Creating the Project
In 2002, voters elected to turn the marine base into a park. Soon, the Department of Defense sold the property. As part of that deal, more than 1,347 acres were transferred to public ownership, and $200 million was contributed toward development of the Great Park.
The Legacy Project was conceived shortly after that 2002 vote when three photographers escorted three-dozen college students to the shuttered air station. After additional expeditions, the Project was launched-- with six photographers participating. The group was granted 24-hour access to the air station to document its 1,800 structures.
Ripe for Picture Taking
With the base's closure, most of the buildings were in various states of decay. But the group saw a landscape ripe for picture taking. "As with most photographers, we are insatiable alley walkers and there were innumerable nooks and crannies to explore in a territory normally off limits to civilians," says one participant. "The Orange County Great Park was a shooter's delight, and this haunting landscape gave us all itchy trigger fingers."
The Legacy Project's plans soon became so vast that the venture could develop into one of the most important documentation projects undertaken in Orange County and perhaps nationwide. They have already amassed hundreds of thousands of pictures, many days of video footage, and other visual and written histories of the air station. And they are only halfway into the project - with expected conclusion coinciding with the Park’s completion in 2015.
Imaginative Images
With its broad scope and vision, the Legacy Project brings documentation to a new level. Its photos record the 4,700-acre city within a city that was occupied by thousands of Marines and their families since the early 1940's.
Project members have photographed homes, schools, churches, theaters, playgrounds and shopping centers -- in styles ranging from landscape and impressionistic, to surreal and abstract.
Footprints on Painted Floors
Several images depict the presence of Marines who served there, revealing footprints painted on floors, murals and drawings on walls, rooms with furniture strewn about, clothing and toys.
Other images of the Orange County Great Park are of runways, hangars, and Quonset huts, shot from various angles, at different times of the day, creating pictures that touch on the super realistic.
Bordering on the Surreal
Several pictures border on the surreal, with torn drapes and broken blinds as daylight filters in, reminding viewers of Edward Hopper's later paintings -- which are often filled with light and devoid of people.
There are angled compositions, as well as images with small, nearly imperceptible details, such as placing a small bone in a setting, bending a blade of grass or perching a pebble.
There are shots of runways with striping, cracks and vegetation creeping through. What others might view as fading elements, are modern petroglyphs here, relics of a vanishing society.
The most Impressionist of the images of the Orange County Great Park are landscapes, with raindrops and fog used to create blurred pictures that are inspired by an earlier time.
The Great Picture
In July 2006, The Legacy Project created The Great Picture, the world's largest photograph. Project members, 400 volunteers, artists and various professionals, converted a jet-fighter hangar into a Camera Obscura (a pinhole camera first used centuries ago) and made their exposure through a 6-millimeter aperture onto a single seamless muslin canvas. They spent 35 minutes capturing the black and white image, then processed the photograph in an Olympic-size pool developing tray.
The resulting 3,375 square foot photo is 3 stories high by 11 stories wide and portrays the control tower, structures and runways of the air base /Orange County Great Park -- with a backdrop of the San Joaquin Hills.
Guinness Book of Records
In 2007, The Guinness Book of Records certified both the Project's Camera Obscura and The Great Picture as the largest ever recorded. The picture has been exhibited in a few venues that could contain its massive size. But it has been featured in several hundred publications, including Art in America, Photographie, AfterImage, Juxtapose, Black & White, Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune.
Today, the photographers continue documenting The Orange County Great Park. "We feel that The Legacy Project is a great tribute to the past and the future, and will provide an important archive," says Jerry Burchfield, a Project member. "We hope to open doors to other artistic endeavors through our work."
The completed Great Park may one day rival New York's Central Park, San Diego's Balboa Park, and San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.
Members of The Legacy Project
http://www.ocgp.org/
http://www.legacyphotoproject.com/
