Aurora, Ontario 2008
Davin needed a driver for a gardening magazine photoshoot and knowing that I had well over a decade of proper driving experience, he knew it was in his best interest to give me a call. We trucked up to Aurora, some fifty or so kilometers north of Toronto. His assignment was to photograph a woman called Elfie Blue and her unique compost.
Pardon the shake, I was holding it on the steering wheel the entire time. This is mostly the area right after the NE/CO border on 71.
Denver, Colo. 2007
Toronto, Ontario 2007
Toronto, Ontario 2007
Plus there is that big phallus down by the water.
Echo Park, Calif. 2004
The first time I can remember visiting my great-grandmother’s house it had already been abandoned for years. I was maybe 6 or 7, and my kid memory isn’t to be trusted, but I recall about half a dozen dead cows, one completely flat, another that had been almost completely stripped by coyotes. I remember getting a good explanation at the time, but I sure don’t recall why there were a bunch of dead cows at an abandoned farm house.
I’ve been back a few times since, including last weekend, and occasionally take pictures. As it falls apart and as bored kids come and trash it even more, different (literal) layers emerge. The rotting furniture gets moved, people go through the notebooks and comics and garbage that is all over the floor. This last visit I found the bathtub full of human shit, which was a first. I can’t imagine being at that place long enough to have that urge, let alone line a bathtub.
The decrepit building is an easy target for bored photographers and I feel a little guilty, because I would be the first to condemn them (the photographs, not the building). Here they are, anyway.
Kimball, Nebraska on the 17th.
