Elevators

It started several years ago. My son Matthew became enthralled with elevators. At one point we had to visit an elevator 4 to 6 times a week. We are now down to only weekends. YEAH! The point is, after 3 years of dragging myself to elevators all across the Bay Area, I decided to turn the ventures into an ongoing photo essay.

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The purpose of this series is not to make elevators into an epic element of design and architecture. Rather, I am trying to demonstrate the mystery of the elevator junkies. My son is not the only “special” child, or adult that is into elevators. After posting Matthew’s video’s on youtube (to save space on my computer), Matthew discovered thousands of other postings, from countless other elevator junkies. Go to youtube and view them for yourself and you will walk away with the same statement – HUH? “I don’t get it, what was that for”?

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The video’s only show the doors opening, closing, and maybe the numbers counting up, or a finger pressing a button. If it’s a glass elevator you will get a glimpse of the outside world. But that’s it, nothing more. So the mystery is, why? What do they find so fascinating about elevators? What is the need to go to as many elevators as possible? Or in our case, whenever we travel we must stop at some new hotel or shopping mall just to ride the elevator. Weird, yes. But just another example of how Matthew, and people like him, see the world differently than we do. So this series is a glimpse into their world. Tell me what you see.

March 2017 Update to this series: http://old.melphoto.com/portfolios/new-elevators/