It was just last year...
It was just last year... is a 2013 installation by Richard Ross, which consists of three photomurals containing a total of 108 24" x 24" photographs, that is located within the Eskenazi Health Outpatient Care Center on the Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Hospital campus, near downtown Indianapolis, Indiana, and is part of the Eskenazi Health Art Collection.
Description
It was just last year..., by artist Richard Ross, consists of three photomurals containing a total of 108 photographs of the people and environments in the neighborhoods served by Eskenazi Health as a “depiction of the community’s collective memory.” Inspired by T.C. Steele's murals of the four seasons, originally created as part of the City Hospital mural project in 1914, which featured both professional artists and students working together, Ross, along with his daughter, Leela Cyd Ross, gathered together teams of student photographers to take photographs within the neighborhoods surrounding the hospital. In the fall of 2012 and spring and summer of 2013, using a Diana camera, the student photographers, including elementary school, middle school, high school, college undergraduate, college graduate students, and hospital staff, produced photographs of the people, landscapes, and buildings of Indianapolis neighborhoods. The photographs were then developed, printed, scanned, and retouched before Richard Ross selected 108 images to be used in the final work. He curated three large photomurals – one for each season in which the photographs were taken. Each mural measures 72" x 303", unframed. Of the project, Ross explains:“’Collective Memory’ serves as a great theme for the work. We wanted to create a series of 'tiles' that would reference the world that surrounds the hospital and make it a familiar and comfortable space. While people filled with the tension of awaiting hospital services sit waiting, they could explore and 'solve' the references of ambiguous yet alluring images. Our goal was for the artworks to transform the new space into a warm, welcoming, familiar environment for staff, patients, and visitors. To achieve this we collaborated with students from Marion County, ensuring the artwork truly belonged to the community it would reside in. We selected sites in the immediate environment that the community's population would recognize. The final selects represented animals from the zoo, objects from surrounding museums, dogs and children in the neighborhood, swimming pools, the state fair—a broad swatch of images that would reference the world just beyond the hospital.” -Richard Ross