About

I started this project on October 24, 2016, and may continue it indefinitely.

It’s been fascinating to look at the city through the narrow lens of one minute of it. These photos are candid images of strangers in the city. Sometimes I take a photo where I happen to be, and sometimes I go to a specific place to see what is happening there. All these photos are taken in the city limits of D.C., on weekdays in the one minute between 5:01:00 and 5:01:59.

This project is the work of Victoria Pickering. I’m a photographer and web developer, and used to be a financial mathematician, so I like data-driven projects. You can see my photography work on my site victoriapickering.com, or follow me on Instagram @vpickering or on Flickr vpickering.

We used to lead much more predictable lives, working 9-5 Monday through Friday, and then bursting into freedom or slogging into a commute at 5:01, the first minute that belonged to us.

But now the patterns of our lives have become more complicated - the 24-hour economy, the blurring between work and free time, on-call scheduling, flextime, freelancing, lifestyle changes, etc. etc.

So I set out to photograph what we are really doing on weekdays at 5:01. Here's what I found in Washington D.C.