1,252 Reasons To Take More Pictures

By Margaret Lyons in Arts & Entertainment on Jul 28, 2004 4:50PM

And then there are the photos that make us freak out. The ones we want to print out and get tattooed on ourselves, hang up in our houses, use as our wedding invitations, and just never stop looking at.

Charles Weever Cushman snapped a ton of photos, and he left his 14,500 Kodachrome color slides to Indiana University. These slides span 1938-1969, and show Cushman’s travels to Austria, Canada, Belgium, France, Greece, Turkey, and the U.K. But sorting through 14,500 slides is a little much for one day; narrowed down to just his shots from Chicago, we’re still looking at 1,252 pictures.

Cushman seems to have been a big fan of the Jackson Park Lagoon and ladies sunbathing by the lake. But aren’t we all. His portraits are unbelievable—maybe it’s something about the color, but we just can’t get enough of these. His circus shots made us kind of want to cry. There’s something unsettling about the bright, cheerful, engaging photos and this underlying tragedy, a sense of saddening decay that’s lurking just behind the wide smiles and simple shoes. Not every picture is a masterpiece—there are a lot of flower shots, a lot of aerials that don't make a ton of sense—but the collection contains enough gems to be totally captivating.

OK, now we’re embarrassed. Warning: this could take up your whole afternoon.