Daguerreotypes of Jack Murphy Stadium Demolition

 San Diego Stadium was built in 1964.  It was known as Jack Murphy Stadium from 1981 until 1997, at which point the naming right became purchasable by highest bidder. After a long battle for a new stadium, Chargers football team, who were the primary users, moved out of San Diego in 2017.  Subsequently, the building was slated for demolition.

  I moved to San Diego in mid 1990s, and still remember seeing this structure for the first time.  Built in brutalism style and surrounded by a seemingly infinite parking lot, the stadium dominated the once fertile valley of San Diego river like a fortified castle.  Over the decades, its cold towering concrete coils managed to evolve into a familiar and even somehow welcomed sight, as I seeing it upon return from a long road trip meant that I was nearly home. 

  One December day, while driving by on I-8, I was stunned by a sight of crumbled walls, twisted rebar, and dust rising up to the sky like a spirit offering from an Aztec fire.  I was finally able to see inside the ring, as if gaining first access to the belly of the beast.  Seeing this iconic landmark beginning it’s ultimate demise was more of a shock to me than I expected.  The scene immediately conjured up visions of what the Coliseum must have looked like when it’s walls just started collapsing, decades or centuries after the lions and gladiators left the building.  Before the scene was gone from my sight, I decided to make a 4-plate daguerreotype series documenting this momentous occasion. Making four plates seemed befitting, as I’ve spent some time living in Japan, and there this number is associated with death, being phonetically similar in their language.

  Evoking the spirit of Thomas Easterly, I timed my returns in such a way as to show the various stages of demolition work progress.  Along with the building itself, I wanted to give future viewers a sense of its surroundings, and thus choose to make my wider views from different, carefully selected perspectives. Plate #2 had to be made from a shoulder of a one-lane overpass connecting freeways I-15 and I-8.  With cars, trucks, and busses zooming by at 60 miles per hour just feet behind me, that was likely the fastest I’ve ever set up and broke down a 4x5 camera.

  Seen below are the silver plates that will now hold upon them a glimpse of a time when old yielded to new.  Though their physical weight is not as grand as of concrete that made up the Jack Murphy stadium, these unique images were the last to be sculpted by the light reflecting from it. 

Anton