500 metres - a manifesto

Those who have flown into a city at night have seen the beads of light which connect centre to suburb, the great pools where a stadium is open to the sky, the surprising blackness of inner-city parks.

Imagine another kind of point of light. What would we learn if each glittering dot was a window into an area 500 metres by 500 metres, an intimate space in a city, the whole of a village, a fragment of a landscape? In this case, what will distinguish each of the dots is that they will represent the vision of a photographer who is sufficiently interested in where he or she is to make photographs of what they can see.

One 500 metre site with good photographs, made by a committed photographer, will already make a difference to how we see the world ... Imagine the impact of a hundred such sites, a thousand. There is no reason why this small project should not have this ambition. We certainly hope that over time the project will become a place to visit if you want to get a sense of what's going on elsewhere, or to reflect on what's going on where you are.

The only limitation to participation in the project is that each contribution a photographer makes will be a set of images taken within an area roughly 500m x 500m. It can be urban, rural, what you will, so long as you think it was important to photograph.

Any photographer who has a web site or homepage and who is able to develop their own simple web album can participate. If you don't know how to make a web album, your best starting point is likely to be to download David Ekholm's excellent (and free) JAlbum from http://www.datadosen.se/jalbum/. We'd also be grateful if you can ensure that your site is viewable by users of both IE5 or higher and Netscape 6 or higher. There are no constraints on the technology or media used to take the photographs.

If you are on the streetphotography list (http://www.topica.com/lists/streetphoto), you can contribute your 500M site, by mailing the list with a URL and a brief (max 100 words) comment on your work. Otherwise mail directly to Chris Tribble (don't forget to remove ANTISPAM from the email address) and we will include your site on the 500 metres index. To begin with it's going to be as simple as that. The images are your copyright and your responsibility. All we are doing is creating an index that will let those who are interested begin to look through all these new windows.

If things grow, and we have the resources, we might be able to put together a dedicated site where images can be hosted, but for the moment, the plan is to keep it simple and see if people think the idea is worth developing.