12-JUL-2006
Remembering the Santa Fe, Ash Fork, Arizona, 2006
Ash Fork has seen better days. For years this small town stood along the route of the legendary Route 66 that carried traffic from Chicago to Los Angles. It was also a stop on the Santa Fe railroad. Ash Fork has lost both its highway and its railroad. But it has a modest museum, featuring a handmade mannequin of a Santa Fe conductor. Wearing yellowing white gloves, it clutches a timetable for the trains that served Ash Fork long before the coming of the automobile. It was once said that Ash Fork's trains "ran from nothing, through nowhere, to no place." Today, Ash Fork has no trains at all. By photographing just the patiently folded hands of the mannequin holding the ornate timetable from another era, I am able to stop time, and make the past become the present, at least for this moment.
11-JUL-2006
Signs of the times, Flagstaff, Arizona, 2006
Advertisements come and go on the side of this old building in downtown Flagstaff. The abstracted layers of painted pleas for attention speak of the ebb and flow of business over the years. It is all about time. I add context to this patchwork of paint by including the old clock in the foreground, which is all about time as well. It not only tells us where we are, but it also tells us approximately when this block of buildings was built. And of course it tells us the exact time I made this image. Once again, the past and present merge in both space and time.
10-JUL-2006
Vanished museum, Meteor City, Arizona, 2006
At one point during it’s nearly 70 year run, the Meteor City trading post offered tourists a museum of western relics, both real and imagined. The museum has long since vanished. Its fading and disjointed plywood sign, along with a few steer skulls, lie unnoticed in a walled-off storage area behind the trading post. I was able to make this photograph through a small gap in a fence. This museum once provided visitors with a look back into time, and now it, too, has disappeared into the past. This image brings it back to the present in a fragmented yet surprisingly cohesive form. A white diagonal metal pole unites the three long dead steers, while a large log and an enormous rope create a layer linking their skulls to the sign. Perhaps this scene offers us a more authentic look into the past than the museum did.
12-JUL-2006
Scars of time, Seligman, Arizona, 2006
Seligman is another one of those small towns that once lined the Arizona portion of US Route 66 – the “Mother Road.” I spent my brief time in Seligman searching for visual clues to its nostalgic past. This battered relic of that past likely had its best days on Route 66 before the legendary road was bypassed by the new Interstate highway system. With this close-up study, I offer a metaphor for that loss and displacement. The scarred, rusting surface of the car mocks the sleek and shadowy chrome decorations that once represented, along with Route 66 itself, “modern times.” Once again, the past briefly appears before us, this time wearing the guise of a car that stopped moving a long time ago.
11-JUL-2006
Café, Twin Arrows, Arizona, 2006
Twin Arrows, a truck-stop, trading post, gas station, and café that once served travelers on the now abandoned US Route 66, withers in the heat and wind of an Arizona desert. Time is taking its toll on the café’s paint. The wire that once supplied its electric power is no longer needed. This image is a harsh reminder that we live in an ever-changing world. From the perspective of the present, this image makes us think about the past. We know that this café was once a traveler’s oasis. And we know that it lost its road, and then its life. The dark clouds passing overhead remind us that nature will eventually reduce this building to an unrecognizable ruin.
12-JUL-2006
Cruiser’s Café, Williams, Arizona, 2006
In stark contrast to the café in the previous picture, this US Route 66 cafe is very much in the present, yet it also draws heavily on the past for its meaning. In 1984, Williams became the last town to be bypassed by the US Interstate highway system. Cruiser’s Cafe sits alongside of what once was Route 66. It is now Williams' Main Street. The huge mural pays homage to the legendary automobiles that once made the long run from Chicago to LA -- and passed right through the heart of Williams. The foreground layer of this image, which consists of the tables, chairs and umbrellas of the café itself, seamlessly blend into the background layer of the mural. We view the past here in present day terms -- my image is as much about the diners who will soon fill those tables, as it is about the romance of a defunct highway.
11-JUL-2006
Dark Corner, La Posada Hotel, Winslow, Arizona, 2006
Mary Colter, one of America’s foremost architects, designed La Posada for the Fred Harvey Company in 1928. It served travelers on Route 66, as well as passengers using Santa Fe trains from 1930 to 1959. The Santa Fe used the building for its Winslow offices for nearly 40 years. In 1997, a private company brought it from the railroad and restored it to its former glory. This coat of armor stands in a darkened corner of the hotel’s restored ballroom. It speaks to us of the past, yet I get the feeling that the warrior has just opened that door to confront us.
12-JUL-2006
Discarded signage, Snow-Cap Drive-in, Seligman, Arizona, 2006
Generations of debris give Seligman's eccentric Snow-Cap Drive-in much of its character. How long has this sign that once helped sell malts and shakes to Route 66 travelers, been bleaching in the grass? The effect of time on the sign is startling. What once was intended to attract attention now shocks and repels. It almost seems as if the Snow Cap Drive-in itself is lost to the past. Yet it still sells malts and shakes only a few yards away from this rotting sign. We are looking at an image that I made in the present, its subject one that is already lost in the past.
11-JUL-2006
Weatherford Hotel safe, Flagstaff, Arizona, 2006
Flagstaff's Hotel Weatherford is the oldest in town. The great landscape artist Thomas Moran completed his western sketches here, while author Zane Gray wrote his "Call of the Canyon" while staying here as well. There is not much left in the hotel that recalls those days, except for its original safe, which is now displayed in the main lobby. I moved in on its handles and lock dial to stress its function, while also emphasizing the ornate, hand-painted decoration, placing the safe in time. In those times, safes were designed not just to protect, but also to project a sense of wealth and taste. They were furniture as well as appliances. This image evokes a sense of that past, inviting our touch and commanding our interest and respect.
12-JUL-2006
Driving dreams, Ash Fork, Arizona, 2006
Ash Fork, a Route 66 town about 25 miles east of Seligman, has little left to show from its days as railroad town and highway rest stop. They tore down its elegant Harvey House hotel. A fire did the rest. Today, the bypassed remnants of Route 66 still serve as Ash Fork's quiet main street. The lone reminder of Ash Fork’s glory days serving traffic on Route 66 is this motionless car cruising through the clouds on top of a local gift shop. This surreal image is rich in incongruity, a 50s fantasy come to life. The rakish, cloud-crowned sedan, with its dimly perceived driver (sideburns intact) recalls the nostalgic past, while the gift shop below places it firmly in the present.
10-JUL-2006
Imagined Passions, Winslow, Arizona, 2006
Winslow’s historical pride seems to rest more on the lyrics of a 1970’s popular song than on its role as a stop for Santa Fe railroad passengers and US Route 66 travelers. The song – “Take it Easy,” by Jackson Browne, and made famous by a group known as the Eagles, was set on a Winslow street corner. As in much of popular music, the lyrics are built around romantic passions, and Winslow built “Corner Park” as a nostalgic salute to them. The actual wall of a gutted building serves as a backdrop to the park. It is cleverly painted to bring the imagined passions of the romantic lyrics to life. I include only part of that wall here, which features an abstracted rendezvous in one of the windows. I layered this image by using the streetlight, gleaming in the late afternoon sun, as a foreground. The 70s are now long gone, its music treasured as nostalgia for those who remember it. Winslow does not want us to forget its claim to fame, and this image tells us what it wants us to remember. (There is also a statue and another painted wall panel in this monument to "Take it Easy." I feature that part in Gallery Seventeen. Click on the thumbnail below to see it: