RVA Day Trip

A short color-negative walk through Richmond, Virginia, from new glass to painted brick to late-sixties chrome.

Richmond, Virginia, United States / 35mm color negative (stock unidentified) / RVA Day Trip — RVA Day Trip collection, 35mm film archive

The roll starts with the neck craned back. A modern block of glass and steel turns its corner against a soft blue sky, and the underside of its overhangs glows a warm copper-orange while the balcony railings stack away in cool gray lines. It is the kind of frame you make on foot, when a building you would normally walk past insists on being looked at from directly below.

Then the camera comes down to street level and finds the opposite temperament: a long industrial wall painted in chalky blue-gray and salmon-pink bands, cream window panels going hazy above. A gas meter sits in its dark recessed alcove like a museum piece, and a white-capped fire hydrant holds the bottom of the sloping sidewalk. Nothing here is trying to be photographed, which is exactly why it was.

The last frame lands where the day was probably headed anyway. Gabled storefronts in mint green, white, and dark green line up behind red patio umbrellas, and in front of them a black vintage fastback stretches nose to tail across the frame, chrome catching the flat light like it never left the late sixties. Between the tower, the wall, and the car, the roll reads as one continuous walk through Richmond, Virginia — looking up, looking sideways, and finally stopping for whatever is under those umbrellas.

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Related

Virginia / Richmond / United States

  • Cemetery - A single fall afternoon among old walled stones and white marble rows in Alexandria, Virginia, on 35mm color negative.
  • Fall Leaves - Three color-negative frames of leaf-covered ground and thinning trees along a Belmont Bay path in Woodbridge, Virginia.
  • Kodak 200 at Belmont Bay - Golden-hour shoreline frames from Woodbridge, Virginia, where a goose family holds the bank.
  • Loosies - Orphan frames from the Virginia waterfront, where fog, flowers, and camouflaged moths all practice the art of disappearing.
  • Same Shots, Two Film Stocks - One evening at Belmont Bay, photographed twice — matching frames from two different color negative rolls.
  • Snowfall - Five color negative frames from a Woodbridge, Virginia snow that arrived before the garden agreed to winter.
  • Giants Art from the Dean Collection at Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (I) - A color-negative walk through the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, from Dean Collection galleries to painted stone.
  • Giants Art from the Dean Collection at Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (II) - Neon, marble, and glowing resin traded back and forth through the glass of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Images

Upward view of the corner of a modern glass building with orange underside panels and metal balcony railings against a blue sky with thin clouds.
The corner of the building folds like origami, its soffits burning copper against a cool afternoon sky.
An industrial wall painted blue-gray and pink with cream window panels, a gas meter set into a dark recess, and a white fire hydrant on a sloping sidewalk.
Someone painted the utility wall in nursery pastels, and the hydrant stands at the bottom of the slope like it approves.
A black vintage fastback car parked on a street in front of gabled storefronts in mint green, white, and dark green, with red patio umbrellas behind it.
The long black car holds the whole block still while the umbrellas behind it keep their red against the gables.