Abandoned

Good Luck, Keeler, California.

A couple of weeks ago I got an email from my photographer friend Terry Thompson. He’d seen a call for entry for a show called Abandoned. He knew that theme was right up my dark alley. I’ve been captivated by places where man’s footprint is evident, but little remains. Those scruffy locales have grabbed me at least since 2002, probably longer. In fact, abandoned places and things have earned their own category in the annals of Steve Immel photography. The category At the Edge of What’s Left hints at stories about man’s failed attempts to tame the untamable, where the futility is palpable.

Standard Oil of Cow Springs, Arizona.

Presbyterian Church, Taiban, New Mexico.

The image that launched the series was made in the near almost ghost town of Keeler, California. The year was 2006. The image is Good Luck. To amplify on the abandoned theme, the teardrop trailer on the shore of an alkaline lakebed has returned to the  earth. It’s no longer an identifiable trailer. It’s pile of rubble. I know this because I Googled Keeler and saw a photograph of the metal detritus where once had lived a perky trailer amid the ruins of a mining town relegated to what ifs.

Jackrabbit Homestead, Morongo Basin, California.

Standard Oil of Rice, California.

Here are a handful of photographs from At the Edge of What’s Left newly shortened to The Edge of What’s Left. Less is more, cupcake.

I fully intended to enter Abandoned till I saw that the Tucson gallery hosting the show would print the photographs on luster paper, would be displaying small prints in cheap mats and frames, I’d have no control over pricing, and they’d have my files. Uh, no.