Afterlife: Coastal Cities and River Valley Towns
Having grown up on the outskirts of a post-industrial city in Pennsylvania, I feel a connection to people and the land in deindustrialized cities and river valley towns in Connecticut, where I now live.
There is something familiar and haunting, for me, about these post-industrial landscapes. Where worn-out buildings now stand, I try to picture the tailor shop at the top of the hill in Reading, Pennsylvania, where my grandfather made his living and raised his family.
I recently re-engaged with photographs by John Divola and have found new understanding in his words: “I view photographs as artifacts of experience — traces of decisions made in time and space. My aim is not to illustrate ideas but to express a visual experience, a tension between presence and absence, between the fragile and the decayed.”
