Once Upon A Playground
By Brenda Biondo
14 January 2008
"Once Upon A Playground" is an on-going series of photographs centered on vintage playground equipment that is fast disappearing from the American landscape. The equipment we grew up with – from towering metal slides installed in the 1940s to giant rocket ships erected in the 1970s – becomes more scarce each year as communities across the country renovate their parks and school yards. Enjoyed by generations of Americans, these vanishing artifacts of our childhoods represent a physical link to a piece of the country's social and cultural history.
I feel it's critical to create a visual document of remaining structures in their original environment and context before they are gone forever. Although many of the photographs in the overall series are documentary in nature, I am particularly drawn to capturing the decidedly sculptural aspects of the pieces and the viewpoints from above and below that are likely to have been experienced by children at play. At the same time, the absence of children in the photos suggests a sense of abandonment and foreshadows the structures' impending removal. (Several pieces of equipment featured in this series were removed and discarded just months after I photographed them.)
More than 130 additional playground photos are can be found on my website, www.oldplaygrounds.com
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