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.

Scenic Dells

Scenic Dells, a photo by meagan.porter on Flickr.

The photo above was taken from the Wisconsin River bridge in Wisconsin Dells, May 2011. Part of my Strange Landscapes series.

I went on the first shoot for my personal project on Monday. I had a bad day at work and really didn't feel like going, but I'd been planning it for about a week. I'm a sucker for excuses - it was cold, I was tired and I only had an hour or so to take photos. But I bribed myself with Starbucks and a reality check - if I was going to attempt to capture the Dells in the off-season, I only have a few weeks to get started before the tourists flood in on Memorial Day. I forced myself to go through with it, and I'm glad I did. Once I got started it was hard to put the camera down and pull myself away. I had a fantastic first day and it gives me a ton of motivation to continue the project. I wound up with a dozen or so photos that I'm very proud of, with more to come on my Flickr in the next few days.

I used to pass the sign above every single day in the two years that I worked on the strip in the Wisconsin Dells. I always thought it was interesting but I had never gotten out of the car to take a real look at it. I parked in the public lot and for the first time realized how inaccessible the Dells is by foot - the strip is fine but sequestered from the rest of the city, which consists of spread out and sprawling water parks and tourist traps. You really have to drive from one place to another, which is pretty ridiculous. Getting to this spot I felt like a little kid on monkey bars, jaunting from one spot to another.

Anyway, it wasn't until I got in front of the sign that I realized what was behind it - a huge electrical complex thing situated between the river, dam, and railroad tracks. I had passed that sign a million times before, driven on that road twice a day for two years, and had never seen what I was seeing from the sidewalk. I guffawed and got to work.

The rest of my short time there was exactly the same way. Maybe it sounds cliched, but it wasn't until I really stopped and looked at the Dells that I started to see things, to really see them. I expect this project to operate in much of the same way, not only a process of technical discovery with my camera but hopefully a process of personal discovery, teaching myself to look at things and really see them.

I'll leave you with a quote I used in my thesis:
"I had heard of the Wisconsin Dells but was not prepared for the weird country sculptured by the Ice Age, a strange, gleaming country of water and carved rock, black and green. To awaken here might make one believe it a dream of some other planet, for it has a non-earthly quality, or else the engraved record of a time when the world was much younger and much different. Clinging to the sides of the dreamlike waterways was the litter of our times, the motels, the hot-dog stands, the merchants of the cheap and mediocre and tawdry so loved by summer tourist, but these incrustations were closed and boarded against the winter and, even open, I doubt they could dispel the enchantment of the Wisconsin Dells."  - John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley in Search of America, 1962