Page 23 - NyghtVision Magazine Volume 3 #2

C
A PHOTO ESSAY BY LEW G. BROWN

Our family has a tradition. Whenever we gather for special events, like birthdays or holidays,
we charge someone, and sometimes everyone, with asking a thought-provoking question that
everyone has to answer. One of my questions has been, “If there were really such a thing as a
dependable time machine, where in history would you want to go?”

I think this question came from watching Wal- is a city that overwhelms me with feelings. On
ter Cronkite host the CBS television network many visits I have said, “I wish I could have
news series, “You Are There.” Each week, CBS lived here to see what life was like as the peo-
reporters would appear at the sites of reenacted ple and politicians led the fledgling country
historic events and report them as though they into the Civil War.” I wonder what it felt like to
were occurring in real time. Cronkite conclud- worship in those grand churches in the midst
ed each installment by intoning, "What sort of of such political and social turmoil. I wonder
day was it? A day like all days, filled with those how it felt to be among the rich and promi-
events that alter and illuminate our times... nent citizens who dwelt in the palatial homes
all things are as they were then, and you were that still stand watch over the harbor. I won-
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there." In addition to providing viewers with der what it was like to live and party in those
the facts about what occurred at the particular homes or at the surrounding plantations. I
event, the installments succeeded in evoking a wonder how it felt to traverse the cobblestone
sense of what it must have felt like to be there, streets or watch ships leave the port, bound for
as the series title implied. faraway places. I wonder what it felt like to be
In answer to my own question, at the top of a slave—to have another person own me.
my list of destinations for time travel would be So, as I considered potential photo essay
Charleston in 1860. You might wonder why I topics for this architecture and construc-
would select Charleston, given the thousands tion-themed issue of NyghtVision magazine,
of places and events one might choose to visit. I jumped at the chance to return to Charles-
One reason is that my daughter has lived ton’s historic district, to take photographs that
in Charleston and in Folly Beach for over ten capture the richness and variety of the city’s
years. Because of this, my wife and I have architecture and the depth and breadth of the
visited the city many times. We find that feelings that surface whenever I visit.
we never tire of visiting Charleston—the city
is alive with new things in the midst of old What I feel in Charleston is tension.
things.
The main reason I’d like to travel back in 1 Wikipedia, s.v. "You Are There (series)," last modified March 23,
time to this place, however, is that Charleston 2013, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Are_There_(series).

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