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Ganesha Former Moderator
Location: Seattle, Washington, USA Gender: Male Total Likes: 216 likes
| | | Why < on 6/13/2014 3:56 AM > | Reply with Quote
| | | I’ve always been intrigued by the unnatural lines, rhythms and textures of “built environments,” and by the hope implicit in their decay. Until recently, I’d never heard of urban exploration, and I didn’t know anybody else who liked this stuff. But during my mother’s final years, this interest took on a new intensity. Her nursing home stood on a hill overlooking a dilapidated light-industry area. Somehow, forming compositions from its raw material became a channel for my grief. After witnessing another step in her debilitation—yet another broken bone from a fall, or loss of the ability to turn her radio off and on because it was too complicated—I would go down the hill and photograph the shamble of wrecking yards, the jubilant weeds, and the natural alleys that told the truth about the painted fronts on the other side. The distressed landscape flowed into my lens, and apparently the grief flowed out; I would go home feeling better. She’s been gone for three years now, but the fascination remains. I’ve found other people who like this stuff, and who have (or make) better opportunities to appreciate it. To me these images are a metaphor for the passage of life and time. How ambitious we were, yet how limited. Look how things have changed!
| "The beauty of mediocrity is that anything can make you better." -Jeff Mallett |
| Dayman
Location: Oxford, Ohio/Middletown, Ohio Gender: Male Total Likes: 200 likes
"Too Much, Too Soon...You're way out of tune"
| | | Re: Why < Reply # 10 on 8/3/2014 7:50 AM > | Reply with Quote
| | | Wow that was really touching and I'm sorry for your loss. I too kinda grieve in similar unconventional way. For starters, just like Dawn, I frequently search for places on google earth and so on to occupy my thoughts when I don't want to think about certain things. Even though I've gone to very few of the places I've scouted out, it still is sort of therapeutic. Based on some less than ideal circumstances with my life and my home life in particular, I typically find myself aimless driving or walking around when I'm distressed. During a particularly rough patch a month or so ago, everytime I started to fell like my depression was getting to be too much I would drive out this abandoned house I knew. I don't care too particularly much for the place as it is completely empty inside and shittily remodeled...but for some reason I'd always find myself there. I would pull into the lot that was a couple hundred feet away, get out, walk up to the building, sometimes only staring at it, sometimes going in. The porch and interior was in bad shape and generally the house was diplapidated and dangerous but typically Id go farther everytime. It only took about 3 trips for me to go in, and I'm not a particularly hesitant person with UE, but I sort of respected the buildings ability to drop me or collapse on me at any moment. I typically would only walk in, go as far as I was comfortable with and turn around and walk out but that was kind of enough for me. I mean I still was depressed but it became a part of the grieving routine. Through about 10 trips I went from standing outside staring at it for a half hour to going as far out on the collapsing second story porch as I could without pulling it down. I didn't realize it then but I think I was subconsciously taking little leaps of fate, in an attempt to validate my own existence to myself in weird sort of way.
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