MANSFIELD – Tracy Graziani doesn’t believe in excuses.
After reading “The Happiness of Pursuit” by Chris Guillebeau, who has visited every country in the world, the professional photographer was inspired to set her own goal: to walk and photograph every street in Mansfield.
“I think sometimes when you see stuff like that you have all these excuses – if I didn’t have kids or if I didn’t have to work for a living,” Graziani said. “There’s all these things we use to make excuses for not doing something interesting, and so I decided to come up with something I could do, despite whatever limitations I saw myself as having.”
If she chose to, she could surely manufacture a mountain of excuses. Graziani has two children and works full-time running Graziani Multimedia with her husband, Lou. She even admits that she hasn’t always taken time to pursue her own projects.
“When it comes to doing my own creative work, that almost never happens because I get busy with work and kids and life… but it doesn’t mean that I have to put my creative passions and the things that actually bring me joy in the world on hold,” Graziani said. “You can’t wait for life to happen at some point in the future. Life is happening right now.”
With her busy schedule in mind, she set out last summer on her “Street by Street” project, which has no deadline and only one requirement, a spatial one. She intends to eventually photograph every street in Mansfield.
She’s started by taking walks through downtown Mansfield when she has a half hour or so to spare while working out of her office at Idea Works on Fourth Street. She syncs her phone’s GPS with her camera, so she’s knows exactly where each image is captured.
Later, Graziani anticipates she’ll have to drive somewhere else and start from there.
“I’ve always felt that you really don’t know a place if you don’t walk around on foot,” Graziani said.
She recalls walking to school as a child, but now she wonders how many people have never walked the streets in their own communities.
“I’m not from Mansfield, but it is my home,” Graziani said. “It’s where I’m raising my kids, and I’ve put down roots and it’s become my home, but I probably don’t know it as well as I could or I should.”
Graziani grew up in Marion, Ohio with big dreams of leaving the rust belt. She did briefly, but returned to Ohio when she fell in love with her husband. Mansfield was “part of the package.”
Initially, she resented it.
“Everyone I met really hated it here,” Graziani said. “It’s really hard to be new here because of this community attitude of self-loathing. It makes you feel like there must be a reason for it.”
Once she stayed awhile, she realized there was no reason for all the negativity and fell in love with Mansfield, too.
“Part of it was finding my ‘tribe,’ but it’s also a choice,” she explained. She defines her tribe as the people who she relates best with.
Graziani recalled living in Detroit, Michigan before coming back to Ohio.
“Detroit, by all arguments, has more issues than Mansfield, but what I found interesting was when I moved there was despite everything people on the outside of Detroit might say, the Detroiters I met were quick to tell me what was great about where they were from, and I fell in love with Detroit because Detroiters loved Detroit,” Graziani said.
In Mansfield, the city’s own negative self-esteem was hard to ignore as a newcomer.
“But it isn’t unsafe. It isn’t ugly. There isn’t a lack of things to do. All the things people think, are not true, which is fascinating,” Graziani said.
“If anything, the main thing we lack here is optimism or hope.”
Graziani is a Lexington resident, but she works in Mansfield and her son attends St. Peter’s Elementary. An “urbanist at heart,” she wanted this project to be about the city.
“I want to tell a story that’s true, so I don’t plan to make it something that isn’t there, but I think you can always look at any given situation in a lot of different ways,” she said. “So, in a lot of ways, I do have an eye looking for beauty and hope as I’m walking around.”
Some of Graziani’s Street by Street photographs will be on display beginning Friday, Jan. 5 in the Book Loft Gallery at Main Street Books, 104 N. Main St. An opening reception and meet the artist event kicks off the exhibit at 5 p.m.
Layland Fowler, owner of Main Street Books, says the photos will be displayed for at least six weeks.
