Dealey Plaza

Today marks the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination. Though this event happened before I was born it has always moved me greatly. A couple of years ago I took this picture of Dealey Plaza from a train I was on travelling from New Orleans to Chicago via Dallas. It had slowed down almost to a snail's speed to enter Union Station, and from the window I was able to see this surreally familiar landscape -instantly recognizable from all the news footage and the many documentaries about the assassination that I had seen. Apart from the modern glass building in the background everything seemed uncannily the same as it had in 1963. It had a profound affect on me –the train took about as long to pass as the presidential motorcade would have taken to pass down the street. Looking at my photograph again now there seem to be curious echoes of that day in 1963 –the black cars heading down, the people on the grass, the book depository in the background, and as it happened to be a bright day in November, the similarities were doubly potent. Location: Dallas, USA