Spring 2010 Abandoned Truck Revisited

Every season I go see my "beloved" truck; I suppose I sometimes call it a car unaware. What do I know? It is beauty in decay to me... I asked my friend recently why don't you go out and see it too, take some photos? He says because you have hundreds of them, why I need to go too?

I guess I see something he does not. That's ok.

The decay continues to mount and it seems rapidly to me. It's not a silent creeping. At least not any longer.

I am sad for the day that I will not have easy access to my beloved truck, still waiting for the perfect moment of lighting and season ... It's strange, but I enjoy this small pleasure ... Perhaps I've enjoyed the easy pleasure of having it nearby, always "there" ? Such a small comfort in a world always changing. Always tearing things down.

America's Wastelands

I was posting a Blue Man Group video earlier today and begun thinking about the wastelands of America I've witnessed in my personal explorations and travels. Urban and industrial decay is not only a tragedy of abandonment but of the environment.

Take, for instance, a small coal town in Pennsylvania - Centralia - where a mine fire has been burning under the ground for nearly 50 years. Centralia is now a ghost town, but the smoldering fire will burn hundreds of years spreading to nearby towns.

What to think of all this? I'm not sure entirely. But environmental disasters are some of the key forces behind cultural abandonment's. Man playing with nature as she builds her industrial playground have consequences. Below is Blue Man Groups video "Earth to America"!

Documenting Time: Abandoned Vehicle

These were captured in the season of winter, while I continue to document time with the same subject through the seasons. There's certainly a different perspective illuminated this round in comparison to summer or fall captures.

Snow can be a natural unifier in photos, and winter light usually elucidates a stark landscape due to the low angle of the sun. While the winter light and snow produce obstacles and undesired qualities at times, winter light also reveals deeper textures and soft hues amidst long shadows often associated with the winter light.

Winter light is indeed one of my favorite light sources. Fall is also one of my favorite light sources with all of it's red hues as the days shorten, mirroring the dramatic changes happening in the fading foliage.

Thus, I grouped my fall (early fall/late summer) collection of the abandoned car as the 'Eye of the Storm'. I may group this winter set as Fade to White, or Fade to Winter Light.

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Documenting Time

We're recording a slice of time each time we photograph a moment. Photographers have the ability to suspend a moment in time.

Many moments can never be captured again, and it's necessary to capture split seconds. Expressions of the human face, for instance, are fleeting seconds. Recording time can also be the moments of capturing the speed of the subject, or stopping the clock in a timeless scenery.

Documentary photographers are recording time. Moments of civil upheaval demand quick reflexes. Urban street photography requires a photographer's wits about them.

Urban photographers capturing the final remnants of abandoned places have little time in most cases, on location, and in the likelihood the structure may be removed at any time.

But recording time can be as unassuming as capturing the seasons and the hours of shifting light. It is true that time never stops providing the photographer with endless change all around them, even in the simplest, humblest moments and subjects.

Humble moments taken close to home can make some of the best photography. Many of these moments allow the photographer time to revisit the subject multiple times rendering a new perspective each and every visit.

You can never take enough captures. Capturing the same image over extended periods of time through the seasons, years, or changes in lighting allows the photographer to grow intimate with the subject and discover something new each time.

My abandoned car photographs are just this premise, visiting in the change of seasons.

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Beauty in Decay

This was taken August of 2008, just outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in a wooded area. A forsaken old truck left behind to rust, but time and nature weathered the truck into beautiful decay.

The story behind the truck is not clear, but like so many abandoned vehicles and places there indeed is a story. This truck's story is mundane in scope unlike stories of lost souls (re)tracing footsteps through the empty halls of paint peeled deeply in the shadowed dreams of abandoned asylums.

Our shared archives are threads connecting us to the past.

All Material in this Photo Blog Gallery is Copyrighted & May not be reproduced, copied, edited, published, transmitted or uploaded in any way without my permission. This copyright is inclusive to all literary property as well as pictorial.
All Rights Reserved.