Snapshots of Liberty Street

I recently started a minicourse on the rhetoric of Instagram–yup, you read that right. Our first assignments were to read Annie Dillard’s Seeing and take three photos of things we’ve never seen before. Dillard describes a special type of observation as “a letting go. When I see this way I sway transfixed and emptied.” She speaks of dark and light, blindness, nature, and expectations. I wanted to take her perspective as I sought out compositions around me. Although I have walked up and down Liberty Street downtown hundreds of times, I tried to “let go” and open up my mind to details I had never noticed nor appreciated–like the fairy door at the bottom of the Michigan Theater, or the intricacies of Graffiti Alley. Below are a couple of black and white images I snapped.