This Playground Closes at Dusk, 2001

In 2001, I didn’t have children yet, but I noticed that a lot of the playgrounds I had grown up with were being replaced, and I wanted to photograph them before they were gone. As I scavenged the playgrounds of New York City, I mostly came across newer and safer equipment, with a lone tall metal slide or merry go round left standing among the new bright plastic jungle gyms. It soon became clear that I was not just documenting ‘endangered equipment’, but a period in my life that was also gone forever. All of the equipment I photographed was torn down soon after I photographed it.