The American Landscape

At the beginning of 2016 I decided to expand the scope of my preferred subject matter—historic downtowns, 19th Century Houses and architectural landscapes—to focus on the more widespread and unnoticed aspects of the American Landscape. 

My first photographs for the project showed darker images and I wanted to continue in that direction. In truth, though, I go wherever my eye and inclination take me. I know what I like and I set out to photograph it. Some of these pictures are dark and brooding, and yet others have a lighter feel. I suppose it depends on my mood on a particular day but in general I’m not a nihilist nor do I see the world in a dark and disturbed way. Quite the opposite, actually. Of course, the camera will sometimes show me something unexpected, or I'll get some feedback that alerts me to other aspects of my pictures that inspire me to explore further...and it's intriguing to follow those paths. But here I seem to be creating the images I have in my mind.

While editing the current body of work I started to notice that the pictures work best in groups so I divided them into several sub series that can also stand on their own under the American Landscape project name: Abandoned Industrial Places, Bethlehem Steel, Architectural Landscapes, 19th Century Houses, Abandoned and Historic Railroads, and Abandoned and Unfinished Highways. These are the things I'm compelled to photograph and so that is the direction for this phase of the project.

Abandonment

Many of the subjects in this series deal with abandonment. This is nothing new in fine art photography. As photographers and artists we and out predecessors have been drawn to decaying and abandoned built environment for decades. But I wanted to describe my own observations that have formed in my mind while I’ve photographed, thought and written about my subjects for this project.

Abandoned Railroads: The Central Railroad of New Jersey’s Flemington and Freehold Branches

Both of these former branch lines of the Central Railroad of New Jersey hold a personal connection and interest for me. And since I love exploring, researching and photographing abandoned or defunct railroads and their derelict (in some cases, repurposed or restored) buildings and structures, they are one of my favorite subjects. Railroad photographers typically like to stand by the side of the tracks and wait for a train to come by. I’m more drawn to the ghostly and mysterious remains were railroads used to run.

The Flemington and Freehold branches both connect back to my childhood 50 years ago. The former (also known as the South Branch Railroad) originally ran from Somerville to Lambertville, which sits on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River. It’s abandoned except for a short segment between 3 Bridges to Ringoes, which is now called the Black River & Western Railroad. When I was a kid in the mid-1960s my father took us on the historic steam engine train ride from Flemington to Ringoes. That train still runs today. At Neshanic Station on the abandoned part there is a historic depot (now an apartment house) and an old iron truss bridge over the South Branch of the Raritan River. They are romantic and ‘enduring symbols’ (see my blog post about this concept) that have opened up a new area of conceptual consideration for me in photographing such subjects. They are great and compelling subjects that I have photographed over several years’ time. While these structures don’t have a direct connection to my past they are part of the same railroad I rode on, so it has been important for me to research and photograph them.

I didn’t discover any of this until 10 years ago. I had just moved to the area and began exploring subject matter to photograph for my graduate studies in photography.

I never rode on the Freehold Branch but I did ride its counterpart, the Seashore Branch, a virtual continuation of it east of the Garden State Parkway. My father also took me on that train in its final days in the mid-1960s. The two sort of connected just south of Matawan station on what is now New Jersey Transit’s North Jersey Coast Line.  So the Freehold line relates for me, and its roadbed courses through my native Central Monmouth County so I know it well. I also started researching it in 2005 to learn its history. I’ve crossed its tracks so many times at different points over the years without ever knowing or thinking about what they were. Now it’s fascinating to explore my own history by walking or riding the trail along those points and thinking about where I was in my life at each crossing. I crossed more at a particular location depending on what period of my life I was in. Each time I drove over the tracks I would just know the landmark. Now, as I explore the right of way at each crossing I get a completely different perspective. It makes the railroad a kind of virtual timeline of my life that triggers memories from different eras.

In that respect the railroad is like a Time Machine and, again, through my photography I can examine how we look at ruins. See my blog post entitled, “Decay And Ruin as Process vs. Romantic Symbol.”

Passenger service on these railroads stopped long ago on both lines and I often like to imagine sitting at one of the remaining depots and waiting for the train. I did that recently at Freehold; while photographing the old platform I stopped for a short while and just leaned against the building, immersing myself in the transit of time, feeling what it was like to wait for the train there decades ago. On the abandoned sections of these lines a train has not rumbled along in more than 40 years (freight continued into the early 70s). You look at the rusted rails and wonder when was the last time a train rolled over them. This is the fascination for me…that element of Time…the history, and how it connects with my own personal history.

Abandoned Highways

I've been fascinated with certain unfinished highways in New Jersey. The pictures I have made so far for this subset are of the Route 206 Bypass in Hillsborough Township where I live. I made them in the summer of 2017 around the July 4th weekend. No work had been done at the site for about 4 years and it had the eerie feel of an abandoned place. Work has now begun to finish it but it sat unfinished and even ‘abandoned’ (as far as my involvement with it is concerned) for 4 years. In these photographs it has all the hallmarks of an abandoned structure: closed off to traffic, removed from public access, nature is reclaiming it, and I felt removed from the normal flow of time when I stood in that space. In short, I experienced the dilation of time flow. In fact, time seemed to virtually stand still there, as it does at my other abandoned subjects, whether railroad bridges, industrial buildings or houses. This idea applies to many subjects in my American Landscape project and it also gets into the realm of the ‘Enduring and Romantic symbol’ versus ‘Decay as Process’. Please see my blog post about this subject.

Bethlehem Steel

These pictures look at some of the remains of the huge steel plant that helped build and defend our nation. Its hulking structures sit on the banks of the Lehigh River, where steel was made for more than 100 years. It is a major aspect of the landscape in Bethlehem and also a part of the Rust Belt remains of similar steel plants in other parts of Pennsylvania. I was led to photograph it through working on another project about my search for elements of my Father and his time at nearby Lehigh University some 70-80 years ago. Since Lehigh is known as a top engineering school and that is what my father studied there, I felt a strong connection with his memory through the ruins. He would often tell me what such plants were making when I was a kid and those memories are not only strong but they are part of his identity to me. This subset began with me searching that aspect of my Father’s memory.

But I got something more out it as well…

And now the dark and ghostly remains are silent with much of the buildings as a reminder of the once huge company, second only to US Steel, the company founded by Andrew Carnegie, and of the Golden Age of American manufacturing might. When I began photographing there I would sit and listen to the wind whistling through the amalgamation of pipes, scaffolding and catwalks…it’s the only sound you can hear now on the banks of the river where once the blast furnaces ran day and night. It’s a wonder to think how an entity like Bethlehem Steel, with plants coast to coast, could end up a derelict mass of abandoned buildings. You realize that nothing is forever, and people in decades past would probably look at the plant and think that it would always be around. Certainly the people who worked there thought it and the families whose generations went to work there. At the old entrance gate there’s a sign on the booth where a watchman probably sat, with lettering barely readable now, so that it looks blank. I made pictures of the whole gate structure and noticed in editing that there was something written there. It says, “The employees of the Bethlehem plant welcome you!” And suddenly this huge industrial installation had a very human presence. That sign made me think of all the loyal people who worked there, who undoubtedly took great pride in their work, the fathers and sons, and sons of sons who worked there for generations, were robbed of their livelihood and their culture, robbed of their town and their very existence and purpose by corporate managers who only cared about putting money in their own pockets. The story of what happened is beyond the scope of this artist statement, but I suddenly felt an emotional weight in deciphering that sign.

Yet the buildings still stand, for the most part, and remind us of the huge history of the place, and the imagined memories which pour forth from every empty window opening, gaping bay and silent interior.

Architectural Landscapes

The intent here is similar to the 19th Century House landscapes—to study and visualize the marriage of landscape and the built structure that occupies space within it. This draws inspiration from a study of architecture and Art History that can be traced back as far as Ancient Egypt: how a building integrates with its surroundings and what substance is derived from that marriage. Like the Victorian houses I photograph, I want my photographs to show how the two create a symbiosis that becomes evident in the pictures.

Abandoned Industrial Places

This short sub-series features two abandoned industrial buildings from the turn of the 20th century. Thus, they have 19th century architectural influences in their design, something that I am drawn to photograph for reasons stated in the other project statements. It is also an artistic preference that has always imbued my fine art photography. And, as stated in the Bethlehem Steel statement, there is a human element that I’m hoping to find traces of. There is also the question of how we look at ruins: as enduring romantic symbol or as ‘process.’ This series uses both architectural photography and architecture as landscape approaches.