John Eide

In 1977 I purchased a house on the edge of downtown Portland. It was built as a single family house in 1872 but was a boarding house when I got it. It needed a lot of work. So every morning, before I started rehabbing the house, I took the 4x5 view camera and 12 sheets of film down the hill to Deering Oaks Park and worked until those 12 sheets of film were exposed.

This beach tree is what initially attracted me to the park. The first few mornings I only photographed this tree. Then I moved on to the ballpark, the tennis courts, other early morning people. For three summers I photographed almost every corner of the park.

Deering Oaks Park sits on the edge of downtown Portland with commercial areas on one side, residential apartments on another side and the University of Southern Maine across the interstate on the third side. Being an inner city park, one is always aware of the city around the park when one is in the park and I wanted to reflect this in my photographs. I started playing games as I worked. I consciously framed in a way to always be looking out of the park. I also tried to have something moving in every frame. My way of working was to have a deep depth of field which meant most exposures were in the neighborhood of one second. So it was easy to get something moving on the interstate or the roads running through the park or people walking dogs.