man took a picture every day until.. (photography)

Somehow Mental Floss (Where Knowledge Junkies Get Their Fix) uncovered Photo-of-the Day by Jamie Livingston, the not-yet-public website Hugh Crawford and Betsy Reid created for Jamie Livingston's 6000+ Polaroids. Because it's a work-in-progress site (a Beta site), there are no names on it, no credits. No contact information. Nothing.

It took Chris Higgens at Mental Floss some time to figure out Jamie's name. Or to learn that it was Hugh Crawford and Betsy Reid who spent years putting the site together after Jamie Livingston died.

"Yesterday I came across a slightly mysterious website — a collection of Polaroids, one per day, from March 31, 1979 through October 25, 1997. There’s no author listed, no contact info, and no other indication as to where these came from. So, naturally, I started looking through the photos. I was stunned by what I found."

Higgens did some impressive Internet detective work to find out more about Jamie. He discovered OTBKB and learned the story.

What started for me as an amusing collection of photos — who takes photos every day for eighteen years? — ended with a shock. Who was this man? How did his photos end up on the web? I went on a two-day hunt, examined the source code of the website, and tried various Google tricks. Finally my investigation turned up the photographer as Jamie Livingston, and he did indeed take a photo every day for eighteen years, until the day he died, using a Polaroid SX-70 camera. He called the project “Photo of the Day” and presumably planned to collect them at some point — had he lived. He died on October 25, 1997 — his 41st birthday.

After Livingston’s death, his friends Hugh Crawford and Betsy Reid put together a public exhibit and website using the photos and called it JAMIE LIVINGSTON. PHOTO OF THE DAY: 1979-1997, 6,697 Polaroids, dated in sequence. The physical exhibit opened in 2007 at the Bertelsmann Campus Center at Bard College (where Livingston started the series, as a student, way back when). The exhibit included rephotographs of every Polaroid and took up a 7 x 120 foot space.

Because of that post (and others), thousands of people are visiting the Jamie site and OTBKB to find out more about Jamie Livingston

Apparently a bunch of Spanish language newspapers picked up the story today and the volume of visitors caused the Jamie site to crash in the middle of the night. That problem is being remedied as we speak.

I heard Hepcat speaking loudly on the telephone at 3 am and it woke me up. Turns out he was on the phone with the people from Host Monster, trying to get them to restore the site. It should be up and running soon. We hope.

There are so many interesting comments on Mental Floss and other places that have picked up the story. Over and over people are saying that it's one of the most moving things they've ever seen on the Internet.

Indeed, the story of Jamie's life and work is an incredible one. Here's an excerpt from the post I run every October 25, the day Jamie died, which happened to be his birthday. Every October 25th is Jamie Livingston Day at OTBKB. This post was originally called, On Polaroids and Lasting Friendship.


When Jamie Livingston, photographer, filmmaker, circus performer, accordian player, Mets fan, and above all, loyal friend, died on October 25th (his birthday) in 1997 at the age of 41, he left behind hundreds of bereft friends and a collection of 6,000 photographs neatly organized in small suitcases and wooden fruit crates.

Jamie took a polaroid once a day, every day, including his last, for 18 years.

This photographic diary, which he called, "Polaroid of the Day," or P.O.D., began when Jaime was a student at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson. The project continued when he moved to apartments in New York City including the incredible circus memorabilia-filled loft on Fulton Street, which he shared with his best friend. That loft was the site of many a Glug party, an "orphans thanksgiving," a super-8 festival of Jamie's lyrical Super-8 films, and a rollicking music jam.

The picture taking continued as Jamie traveled the world with the Janus Circus, his very own circus-troupe, and later when he became a much-in-demand cinematographer and editor of music videos back in the early days of MTV. He contributed his talents to the ground-breaking Nike "Revolution" spot and many other commercials, too. Through it all he took pictures, made movies, and loved his friends. And the Polaroids reflect all of that: a life bursting with activity, joy and sadness, too.

Jamie brought his camera wherever he went. As one friend said, "It probably helped his social life because everyone wanted to be in a photo of the day." It was always interesting to see what Jaime deemed worthy of a P.O.D. My husband remembers his own 30th birthday party in his photo studio on Ludlow Street: "Hundreds of people filled my loft and the party snaked down Ludlow Street to Stanton. But what did Jamie take a picture of? A potato chip or something. It was a gorgeous shot, though."

But more often than not, the photos were of friends, family, himself, special places he had visited, or just something that caught his discriminating eye. And if he'd been to a Mets Game that day, that was it -- a Mets game was always a worthy P.O.D.

And the pictures are utterly gorgeous miracles of photographic artistry. The color, the light, the time lapse swirls, the unerring composition. Whether it was a still life of what he'd eaten for dinner, an unblinking shot of his beloved grandfather (Pops), or swooningly romantic portraits of his beautiful wife or ex-girlfriends, any one of these photographs should be in a museum collection. But perhaps more importantly, Jamie's friends and the world need access to these pictures, which is why his devoted friends have been talking for years about ways to exhibit this massive body of work.

The fact that so many people are discovering the life and work of Jamie Livingston via the Mental Floss site is unbelievably gratifying to Hepcat. Yes he's a little overwhelmed at the moment and is trying to figure out how to resuscitate the Jamie site, all of this attention is a great way to honor a beautiful man and artist who died at the age of 41.