I agree with you about the window images. I also agree with Elijah’s very helpful reading, except that I prefer the second for the very reasons he likes it less: it’s more dynamic, both in the lighting and in the curves of the lines.

I just checked out some of your new work, including Cracked Paint, which is like my image following the windows in that you are both showing the material aging of an abandoned place and making interesting angular shapes. Nice!

Joanne,

Looks like I have another one to add to my Netflix queue. I do find that I’m getting more and more of my ideas and inspiration from other arts.

Abandoned places do seem to have a near-universal attraction, except where there are taboos as with the Hopi and Navajo. I connect it with wanting to know ourselves through our history, and these are particularly poignant reminders. I have a sense that ruins are a more common subject for photographers than for other artists; if true, I’m not sure why that should be.

Great pictures here. There is something so haunting about abandoned places. Do you remember the scene from John Sayles’s “Brother From Another Planet,” when the Brother (Joe Morton), finding himself at an abandoned Ellis Island, touches the wall and hears/feels/sees all the people who had passed through its portals?

Let me add something about revisiting a series: My work is so rooted in the grid and in repetitive elements, that each series I do, and each piece within the series, is “genetically” connected. Sometimes the work just kind of doubles back on itself. It’s not so much that I decide to revisit a series, but that an older series decides to reassert itself–the proverbial hand from the grave, but not as scary ;-)

Thanks for coming by the other day. It was lovely meeting you. I love when the blogosphere intersects with real life!

I think the second window pic is by far the strongest. It’s primarily abstract, but with a hind of window pane on the far right giving it some perspective.

I recently revisited a location I had started as a project a couple of years ago, after more than a year hiatus. I found that I shot much more meaningfully and with more purpose than I had in previous visits. I think the extended absence allowed me a fresh perspective as I was not comparing every new shot to what I had done previously (mainly because I FORGOT what I had already done). I had a much better time than I had hoped, with matching results.

Chuck

Exactly.

“Corpus” is OK, as long as it’s not misconstrued as corpse. Which, unfortunately, is what I found on the last day in an isolated house ruin (not part of the ghost town). Of a mountain lion, with head removed. Not gruesome, but quite sad. Unless someone carried it farther than makes much sense, it was in the vicinity of livestock.

I didn’t mean to imply that you _ought_ to be working in one way or another — I just found the change interesting. In the end, you will continue and your work will continue and you’ll ponder and take photos and your corpus will emerge and evolve. (Although “corpus” might not be quite the right word for this context….”

What I meantersay is that you have a variety of “series” going, some of which overlap yet go in their own directions. A complexity of materials and insights.