Yesterday was my birthday and it got me thinking about how fast life goes by. High school seems like 10 years ago at most, even though I graduated 30 years ago (eek!). College seems like only a few years ago at most, even though it’s been 25 years since I walked across the stage to receive my diploma.
Thinking about college set me down memory lane a bit. I went to school at Texas A&M University, more by default than by choice, as most of my friends were going to A&M and it was the “comfortable” choice, even though, in retrospect, I probably would’ve fit in better at Rice or the University of Texas. (Though, don’t get me wrong, I’m glad I got the education I did and experienced the things I experienced).
Texas A&M is a school steeped in tradition; and one of those traditions for a long time was Aggie Bonfire, a giant bonfire that students would spend months building, leading up to burning it the night before the football game against our rivals at the University of Texas (yeah, it’s kind of dumb once you think about it…don’t blame me, I’m only the messenger!). For 90 years, Aggie Bonfire burned every year. At one point, it reached 110 feet tall, but was, after that, limited to 55 feet by the University administration. It all came to an end my last year at Texas A&M, when the structure collapsed and killed 12 students. Since then, I’ve tended to agree the anti-Bonfire coalition at the University at the time that described the event as “dumb as dirt”.
In 1996, I was working towards my degree in Management Information Systems with an unofficial minor in Journalism (BBA candidates, for some reason, weren’t allowed minor degrees at the time). And, being a photographer, I was focusing on photojournalism. For one of my assignments, I worked on a human-interest story about building Bonfire, the text of which has been lost to time, but the negatives of which are still in my possession. These photos were shot on a Minolta Maxxum 3xi on Kodak TMAX 400 film and, as a trigger warning, some might be considered “problematic”. Incidentally, if you happen to stumble across this and recognize yourself in any of the photos, I’d love to connect…email me at matt@75central.com.
A link to the full gallery is here, but here are a few of my favorites:
