Polling place, Forestville, California, November 2006. Photograph by Alana Jelinek.
Sunset Boulevard, Silverlake, Los Angeles, November 2006. Anonymous photographer.
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A week before the November 2006 U.S. midterm elections, Polling Place Photo Project launched an online initiative to advance innovations in citizen journalism by documenting voter experiences. Through an open call for photographs, citizens were asked to post images and visual stories that, we hoped, would create a collective portrait of voting in America. Beyond the photographs, we were also looking for basic data—zip codes, ballot types, waiting times—to help researchers study how the voting process can be made clearer and perhaps more reliable.
Lofty public-policy aspirations aside, Polling Place Photo Project is ultimately an anthology of photographs, most of them taken with cell phones and small digital cameras by ordinary citizens who are not professional photographers. Even within the eclectic assortment of perspectives, certain essential themes persist. There are bizarre juxtapositions, confusing signage, and a certain amount of apparent ennui. Yet there are also surprises: voting, a distinctly secular activity, taking place in churches and in synagogues instead of town halls and public buildings—and in some places, like San Francisco, in messy garages and dark basements. Everywhere voting is visualized through makeshift signs—banners and posters, ribbons and flags, often in more than one language. Many of the photographs seem unwittingly to be channeling photography’s own history—a shadow of Lee Friedlander here, the neutral palette of Stephen Shore there. Isolated here, these snapshots of an election—already a midterm ago—take on refreshing formal properties. They are citizens’ renditions of directional arrows, taken in libraries and on basketball courts and through the fog of daybreak, pointing us onward. These are the places where we vote. |
St. Theresa Catholic Church, Des Moines, Iowa, November 2006. Photograph by Matt Niebuhr.
Woodyard Precinct Virginia Korean Baptist Church, Fairfax Station, Virginia, November 2006. Photograph by Carolyn Belefski.
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40th and Main, Church, Kansas City, November 2006. Anonymous photographer.
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Hollywood Lutheran Church, Los Angeles, November 2006. Photograph by Louis Sandhaus.
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Somerville High School, Somerville, Massachusetts, November 2006. Photograph by Sabih Mir.
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Mission District, San Francisco, November 2006. Anonymous photographer.
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Zion Lutheran Church, Doylestown, Ohio, November 2006. Photograph by Steve Felix.
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Myers Avenue and West Cleveland Street, Duluth, Minnesota, November 2006. Photograph by Cathe Ishino.
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Mount Vernon Community Center, Mount Vernon, Maine, November 2006. Anonymous photographer.
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Government office, Chesterfield, Massachusetts, November 2006. Anonymous photographer.
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Garage, San Francisco, November 2006. Photograph by David Peters.
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Valley Vista School, Petaluma, California, November 2006. Photograph by Suzuki Cady.
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13th and Reed, Philadelphia, November 2006. Anonymous photographer.
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Voting installation by Brad Blondes, Falls Village, Connecticut, November 2006. Photograph by Brad Blondes.
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10th and Morris, Philadelphia, November 2006. Anonymous photographer.
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Church, Pacifica, California, November 2006. Anonymous photographer.
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Prince of Peace Church, Crofton, Maryland, November 2006. Anonymous photographer.
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