Years and Years of Photographs - 1979 - 1998 New York

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About This Site

Photographs are my memory.

My name is Owen Long. The photographs I've taken over the last 50 years are like external memory storage for the places I've been, the things I've seen and the people I've known. They capture many of the events and sights of my past I had forgotten.

As the scanner excavates my history, I am documenting the process and displaying the newly discovered gems in the Film to Digital Project blog. I've also started posting my newer digital photos as well.

You can also check Instagram, where I post a photo a day.

Owen Long

1979 - 1998 New York > Anti-Draft March at the Pentagon

Taken February 1980

I was excited. I had missed all the political turmoil of the late 1960s, so I was happily on my way to Washington DC to protest President Carter's resumption of the draft registration requirement. (The renewed registration was Carter's precaution in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.)

So I'm one of hundreds of thousands of protesters marching through Washington, and there's no one there to see. It's a ghost town. 'Nobody will see this,' I thought. We have the right to protest, but there's no one here to hear.

The news reports said thirty thousand protesters marched in Washington. No video, just a statement. The protest's organizers claimed two hundred thousand marchers.