Recently featured in their local paper, the Brighton Digital Archives has a wonderful project photographing and cataloguing local barns.
Spurred into action by the frequent demolition of these relics, some of which are over 100 years old, this team of volunteer photographers and history enthusiasts are making sure future researchers know what agriculture looked like in the 20th and early 21st centuries.
“Our purpose was to preserve these barns in digital images, because we know they are disappearing almost every week,” said D.W. “Fletch” Fletcher, a BDA member and a co-chair for the project.
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“Just within the time between mapping the barns and going out to shoot them, five have been taken down,” said Fletcher. “We understand why this is happening and often there are no other alternatives for the owner (but to take a barn down), and we wanted to create this record that will live on …”
With barns disappearing, this only emphasized the importance of the project and for the group to complete its work a quickly as possible, said Fletcher.
Along with the loss of a barn is the loss of its history, says the group. And in about 50 to 100 years, the BDA wants people to have an idea of the evolution of farming and barns locally and what farming life used to look like.
The Brighton Barn Project has begun uploading photos to their VITA site and listing them in an exhibit. At this point, almost 200 barns have been photographed, resulting in over 2,000 images, so you’ll see a lot more added in the near future.
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