FDR Memorial

Author's Comments

The FDR Memorial does not announce itself the way the Lincoln does. There is no single grand axis, no steps rising to meet you. Instead it unfolds, room by room, the way a long life does. Seven and a half acres of granite and falling water arranged in a sequence that asks you to slow down rather than stop and stare. I find it best in the hours just past blue hour, when the uplighting on the water walls holds its warmth and the Tidal Basin goes dark and still behind the trees. Spring is the obvious season here, especially the week before cherry blossom peak when the light is softer than anyone expects and the crowds have not yet arrived in force. But I have come in November too, on a Tuesday morning when the air had gone cold and clean, and found the place almost entirely to myself. The water is the thing. The cascading walls move at a pace that rewards a long exposure, something in the range of half a second, where the water loses its individual motion and becomes continuous. That requires a tripod after sunset, which the park allows, and patience for the moments when no one walks through the frame. The granite around the falls holds the light differently as the evening shifts, going from warm to cool in a way that changes the whole mood of the image. I keep returning to the smaller details. The bas-reliefs, the quotations cut into stone, the way a shallow pool at the base of a waterfall holds the sky. This is not a memorial that gives itself up quickly. That is its best quality.

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