Airports Yesterday and Today

 

One of my final class projects for a photography class at Harvard was people on the go at airports (circa 1986). For the project I'd take the subway to Logan Airport and spend the nights in the terminals taking pictures of people traveling. I'd even sleep there at a gate and then take more pictures in the morning.  My reasoning was to get into the airport mode so that I could take pictures that reflected that feeling.

I remember that I had to 'push' TriX film to ASA 1600 and that I had a special 'continuous agitation' way to develop it.  I also used Ilford paper and special toners.  Basically, I came up with a special way to develop and print the film to capture the airport at night.  But even 'pushing' the film to 1600 I still had to take pictures at 1/15 of a second - which was a pretty slow shutter speed.

Anyway, the top nine images in this post are photos of photos that I took of the final project prints while I was in Maine. On my way home from Maine I spent a lot of time in Airports - I even slept on a bench in Dulles.  It got me thinking of this class project.  So when I got to Seattle I decided to try taking some new 'airport' photos with my digital camera.  I used my little Ricoh GRXIII - which actually has a pretty similar lens to one I used, back in the day, at Logan (Pentax K1000). The bottom 6 images are from the Seattle airport in 2025.

Right away with my digital camera I noticed that the images where WAY sharper and I did not have to 'push' the ISO either. However, I sort of liked the grainy black and white look of my 1980's airport pictures. So in iPhoto I used the black and white filters and made them comparable to the ones originally shot in black and white.  I like them much better this way.  But they are still WAY cleaner and more detailed.

However, I found the biggest difference between the late 1980s and 2025 was that these days I do not feel comfortable getting close to people in airports.  I think it might be related to the whole 911 thing and increased security in airports.  In any case, after I took just a few I chickened out and quit! 

Patrick