Archiving a life

I've heard of a few different websites in the past few years where people take pictures of themselves or their daily lives and post it at their website daily. Yes - daily. But this is easy to do in today's age of digital cameras.

But I was intrigued when I just read about Jamie Livingston, who took a Polaroid a day for 18 years, with the last one being a day before he died. Over 6,000 poloroids - one per day, from March 31, 1979 through October 25, 1997, when he died of cancer on his 41st birthday.

The pictures have been archived online by his friends, Hugh Crawford and Betsy Reid, with a creative interface. (Turns out the website crashed after too many people flocked to it after Chris Higgins at the Mental Floss found the haunting pictures, the details of Jamie's life slowly got out through this blog, and the story got widespread coverage at the Huffington Post, Metafilter, and other websites. Livingston even got a wikipedia entry after this meme caught on!)

And if interested, here's a CBC Podcast featuring an interview with Chris Higgins.

A narcisstic indulgence perhaps but still cool!