I've been fascinated by playgrounds for as long as I can remember. My first playground memories involve being walked to a neighborhood park by my parents, being placed in the baby swings, and being launched skyward. My next memory is of playing at Maple Street Park in Canby, Oregon, which boasted a play structure complete with three slides -- one straight, one wavy, and one twirly. The twirly slide was so tall and mysterious that I could not bring myself to slide down unaccompanied, and had to be escorted by my older (and braver) cousin.

In elementary school, I became fixated on the Commodore 64 game Donald Duck's Playground. In fifth grade, I went to work for the school newspaper. My first article's subject? The new school playground, which was then in the planning stages. In high school I spent hours gazing at play structures in catalogs. I even tried designing my own playgrounds in MS Paint.

Before you declare me completely nuts, let me explain why I love playgrounds the way I do. It's fascinating to me the way all the bars, ladders, slides, platforms, etc. work together to make something structurally sound, aesthetically pleasing, and something that can be enjoyed by children from one generation to the next. Some parks replace playground structures every decade, it seems, but others have swings and slides that haven't moved since I was a kid... and they've probably been there even longer. Thousands of children have enjoyed each one over the years. Many of them got a scrape or two, did a face plant off the slide, or got bonked by a teeter-totter, but it's all just part of the fun of being a kid.

I began photographing playgrounds several years ago. In college, my roommate and I would cure our boredom on weekends by going around campus and taking photos. One evening, we wound up at the city playground and took a bunch of shots there. Two years later, I was working at an elementary school, and over the course of my time there, I took lots of shots of the kids playing on the playground at recess. It was then that I realized how interesting the structures themselves were. So I began taking pictures sans kids (sorry kids, get out of my viewfinder!) It became like an art project, or a scavenger hunt. Not only was I looking for intersesting forms, curves, and angles to incorporate into abstract shots, but I was also hoping to document some of the older playgrounds, knowing that at any moment, the city could decide to rip out a piece of rusted history and put in something pristine, plastic, and parent-pleasing, as they had already done to one or two of my favorite childhood parks.

In 2006, I went online, printed off a list of nearly every park (with a playground) in Portland, and have begun to check them off, one by one. I don't take pictures at every park -- if there's not much equipment there, or if it's just your run-of-the-mill boring plastic playstructure, I may not waste my time.) I try to go when there won't be a lot of kids at the park, and I almost always bring a friend (or two) with me. It's more fun that way!