17-OCT-2004
The Last Great Ghost Town, Bodie, California, 2004
Bodie, a genuine California gold-mining ghost town a few miles from the Nevada border, was once a booming, brawling, blasphemous town of 10,000 – a “sea of sin, lashed by the tempests of lust and passion.” I want you to first see where it is – a cluster of brown structures adrift on a landscape so barren it defies description. A city of ghosts afloat no longer in a sea of sin, but on a sea of sage. To express a sense of place, I emphasize the sage and de-emphasize the town itself in this shot. A dusty trail (so dangerous that I sprained my ankle on it a few moments before making this image) leads us straight in to a church – the most lofty structure in this most villainous of towns.
17-OCT-2004
Picket Fence, Bodie, California, 2004
Some of Bodie’s original fencing is still intact, reminding us that actual human beings once inhabited these houses. It is important to somehow recall the human side of Bodie if we are to appreciate what happened here over 100 years ago. They were not all killers and louts in Bodie – there were also people who took pride in where they lived, and who they were. The symbolic presence of worn picket fence goes a long way here – it may be warped and broken with the sage already reaching for the porch. The windows behind this fence may be cracked, and their curtains torn, but this picture tells us that once, a long time ago, there were actually ordinary people living in this house. And that is why this image sticks in the mind and helps makes this place into a real place.
17-OCT-2004
Iron Wheel, Bodie, California, 2004
Mining tools and equipment still litter Bodie. Nothing has been picked up. Stuff sits just where it was left. This wagon has not moved in over 60 years. And that is why I photographed it in this manner. The grass has been cut, allowing visitors to easily move around Bodie, yet it has been left to grow over the rim of this wheel. I move in that rim and symbolically stress that point: the land under Bodie continues to live and grow, but the town itself remains dead and silent.
17-OCT-2004
Skyline, Bodie, California, 2004
Many of Bodie’s structures lie open to the elements, such as this group of crumbling buildings in the middle of town. I built this image around space. I leave the grass and sage space to grow around, through, and under these buildings, and I allowed plenty of sky to create a sense of scale incongruity and underscore Bodie’s lonely, bleak environment. The five buildings I picked to represent the “skyline” of Bodie lean into each other in great disrepair. They look like refugees, huddling together in the face of an oncoming storm. I also thought the two outhouses in this picture characterized the nature of life in this place. Imagine using one of these when the temperature is well below freezing and the winds are whipping snow through their boards! If we are to gain a sense of place, we must come to understand the true nature of the place, and this image goes a long way in establishing that
17-OCT-2004
Interior, Methodist Church, Bodie, California, 2004
Not much is left inside of this church, the only house of worship still standing in Bodie. The Ten Commandments, painted on oilcloth, once hung behind its pulpit. Unfortunately, those commandments, including “Thou Shalt Not Steal,” have long since been stolen. There is really nothing left to this place but darkness. And so I use light to abstract this image, and hone it down to a bench and lectern. We see very little, and hear less. The image speaks of silence. This empty, soulless church, which in its day saw many a funeral, has finally become a ghost itself.
17-OCT-2004
Reclamation, Bodie, California, 2004
Desert vegetation slowly reclaims its domain as it advances through the rusted metal of a long abandoned vehicle. The line between unrestrained nature and civilization can very thin. In Bodie, civilization is lost. Nature reigns. And that exactly what this image represents.
17-OCT-2004
Vintage Tires, Bodie, California, 2004
I shot these dust-covered balloon tires through the window of a long closed store. To me, tires symbolize progress and transportation, and Bodie, which reached its peak of popularity in the 1880s, was basically a horse and wagon community. Yet here were these old tires, stacked away near the window of a local store, dust covered icons of progress in a town were progress was once measured in body counts.
17-OCT-2004
Sitting Forever, Bodie, California, 2004
Bodie has been dead for a long time, and so has this old car, now little more than a shell of itself, immobile in a field of desert grass. To stress the car vs. grass aspect, I abstracted the car and shot down on the grille and grass, designing the image around the shapes and colors of both. I have seen many images of this car before, including a number of very expressive ones right here on pbase, but none of them use the car to offer us a sense of place. They usually relate the car it to the exciting desert sky, or to the buildings that just happen to be around it. Yet I felt compelled to make an image of this particular car that went beyond just describing the appearance of the car itself, and instead use the car to indicate a sense of place. I had to find a way to make an abstract symbol of immobility out of it. And that is why I made this image as I did.
17-OCT-2004
Into the Future, Bodie, California, 2004
When I began creating a relationship between these two Bodie houses, I intended to build a sense of mystery into this picture by abstracting the house at left through underexposure, and merging its dark shape into the house in the sunny background at right. And that is exactly what I accomplished. However when editing the picture on a large screen, I noticed detail for the first time that added a new dimension to my sense of mystery. Could that be a TV or radio antenna incongruously sprouting from the house at right? It could be a relic from the 50s, or maybe a park employee lives there, enjoying both the past and present simultaneously. In any event, there is definitely something on the roof of that house that is out of synch and out of time with Bodie itself. It is as if someone one living in the Old West was suddenly projected forward into the future by 100 years. Ah, those details. What would we do without them?
17-OCT-2004
Torn Curtain, Bodie, California, 2004
A torn curtain is an appropriate symbol for shattered domesticity – which was once very much a part of everyday life in Bodie – a place infamous for murders, robberies, stage holdups and street fights. Some called the town “second to none for wickedness, badmen and the worst climate out of doors.” One little girl, whose family was taking her to this remote and terrible place, even wrote in her diary” “Goodbye God, I’m going to Bodie.” It was to become a phrase known throughout the old west. Today, Bodie is place only of ghosts, and I thought this image fits that theme as well. I saw these torn curtains as a shabby shroud reflected in the skies over Bodie.
17-OCT-2004
Willy, Bodie, California, 2004
Willy eyed me patiently as I photographed him in sitting on a dresser in the living room of what once was the house of a man named Tom Miller. I thought it appropriate that Willy, who, except for his white ruff and belly, is essentially a black cat, lived in a town of ghosts. I made sure to capture his reflection looking back into the ruined past of Bodie. When Willy realized I had nothing to offer him but a few more clicks of the shutter, he left me alone in Miller’s dusty living room. (Pbase artist Tim May, who was shooting along with me in Bodie, later showed me a picture he made of Willy carrying a large dead rabbit clamped in his jaws. The killer instinct still flourishes in Bodie!)
17-OCT-2004
Centuries Apart, Bodie, California, 2004
Past and present collide in this image of Bodie’s east end. 19th century utility poles point skyward at contrails left by 21st century jet aircraft. It is incongruous enough to see contrails this large in the sky, but to be able to juxtapose them with that receding series of old pole certainly strengthens the incongruity in both scale and function. I abstracted the old houses by underexposing them to stress the contrast between the contrails and poles.
17-OCT-2004
Face in the Window, Bodie, California, 2004
This building was built in 1880 to house H. Ward’s undertaking business. Today, one of its windows is lined with silvery insulating material. When editing this image, I was astounded to see what appears to a mysterious Lincolnesque face of a man gazing at me within that window. I underexposed the facade of the old building to intensify the mysterious feeling of this incongruous apparition.
17-OCT-2004
Tuba, Bodie, California, 2004
Built in 1878, the Miners Union Hall was once the center of Bodie’s social life. An annual Fourth of July grand ball, a masquerade ball on Washington’s Birthday, and Christmas parties were held here. At the far end of its ballroom, now a dusty museum, is an old painting of a shipwreck. Below it is an old piano, bearing a battered tuba on its top. I was drawn to this juxtaposition of symbols because of its incongruity. The waves in the painting filling the background of my image were utterly alien to Bodie, and perhaps represented a touch of romantic fantasy for those who once danced beneath them. The tuba that serenaded those dancers is now mute and dented, much as Bodie itself has been abused by man and nature and is now forever silenced. Neither tuba nor town will ever play again.
17-OCT-2004
Decay and Beauty, Bodie, California, 2004
Buildings such as these once housed people who lived hard, and died even harder. Badmen, bad whiskey and bad climate were all part of Bodie life. Its streets are now silent, but its bad climate still erodes these battered facades, and Bodie’s badmen have all gone to their graves. The town has died with them. This image, through the interplay of light, shadow, texture, and color, expresses both sadness and desolation, but yet I feel that there is a sense of haunting beauty in this scene as well. It is this tension between such decay and beauty that made Bodie so fascinating to me.
17-OCT-2004
Wandering Ghosts, Bodie, California, 2004
When you enter Bodie you can buy a guidebook with these words on its cover:
“And now my comrades are all gone;
Naught remains to toast.
They have left me in my misery,
Like some poor wandering ghost.”
When you leave Bodie, the last thing you see is this hill, blanketed in golden sage and strewn with the machinery built to extract wealth from the ground. The gold is gone and the town has itself become that wandering ghost. All who visit Bodie will carry a bit of that ghost with them forever.
Like many of my other images of Bodie, this works because of its incongruities. The harsh presence of the rusting machinery rising out of the desert’s wild beauty, the small figure of the man on the crest of the hill incongruously compared to the vast scene at his back, and the warmth of the desert colors compared to the barren skies overhead, are all incongruous juxtapositions that help give Bodie its very unique sense of place
