Ian MacLellan

Yesterday I photographed the opening of a time capsule from 1951 at the site of the new Saint Polycarp Village in Somerville. Saint Polycarp school used to be on the same site and when some of the former students heard about the new affordable housing units being built they made sure that Somerville and the contractors knew that their was an important time capsule buried on the site from the first class of the school.

When I thought “time capsule”, I imagined it being filled with spit balls, toys, and old half eaten sandwiches, but nobody really knew what was going to be in the capsule (not even the former students). There was a sort of mystery in the air as everyone pondered just what would be in it…

It turns out that the capsule consisted of more papers and historic documents than toys. I had initially planned on doing a portrait series with all the former students there holding an object that they had put in the capsule 62 years prior, but that didn’t pan out quite as I imagined and I stuck to just getting portraits that somehow related to the time capsule.

It was awesome to see old friends come back together and reminisce about things like walking miles back and forth through the snow and having their days run by a nun with a clicker to keep everyone in time during prayers.