Vacancy

Vacancy, a photo by meagan.porter on Flickr.

Someone once told me that oil paint never dries, and though I'm not a fan of art, it's one of those weird facts that's always stuck with me. I saw a lot of Van Gogh when I lived in New York, and I was fascinated by the realization that his paintings are actually three dimensional, swoops and peaks and valleys of oil paint, all still drying, all in a state of flux for hundreds of years and for hundreds of years to come. I thought about that as I was working on this photo; the next time I see this sign, it will have decayed a little more, and a little more the next time; until someone removes and discards it or it finally crumbles into the banks of the Wisconsin River, it will always be a work in regress, slowly undoing itself.

I've long been fascinated by anything falling into disrepair, the patinas of metal, the peeling of paint. I wonder about the backstory; for someone minorly obsessed with maintenance and "taking care of things," it is amazing to me when anything is neglected for so long, so long that it is actually showing its neglect, and how sometimes that neglect can produce beautiful results.

The morning I finally stopped to capture this, the fog was rolling off the Wisconsin River in an early March that hasn't quite yet figured out who it is or what it's doing with itself season-wise. The sign jutted out of the trees and fog, menacing, like a prop in a haunted house. And unlike the past three years I've passed by this sign, I stopped immediately, knowing it was now or never as soon that mess of trees would start to bud out with green. The first thing I noticed when I stepped out of my car was a much newer, much nicer "No Trespassing" sign that I made sure to stay on the right side of. And swarms, swarms of little black bugs circling each other.

Photos of signs are difficult to make interesting, especially when you have a sign that's interesting all by itself. I've taken quite a few of them and have my favorites, but every one is a new challenge. For this one in particular, I knew I couldn't take a straight-on photo from my five foot tall perspective and call it a day. I wanted to capture that fog, that desolation, some of the road in the background. And I knew I wanted the photo to be filled with that tree, like those brambles go on forever. It wasn't until I got closer that I realized the "NO" in "NO VACANCY" was scratched out, and that became my focus.

Those trees have started to bud out now with the warm weather and the photo above just wouldn't be the same. I had a small window of time until Mother Nature ruined my shot until October or so, and I'm glad I took it.