Pictorial History Frame by Frame

I started my photographic journey in the early 1970s. My camera was a Minolta SLR with no electronics other than the flash meter. Focusing was accomplished via the split mirror circle at the center of the viewfinder. One had to know the facts of optics in order to get the right results. There was a lot of playing around with the f/stop, focus, ISO films, etc. Most of the photos were shot on Panchromatic B&W negatives. As a young man my budget was quite limited and the cost of travel dominated the day.

Film processing and photo-finishing was expensive for the person I was in those days. Generally, I shot the frames and sent the film off to be developed without being printed. Later I had a wage paying job and while still living with my father put together a darkroom in a closet. I invested in an enlarger and a print dryer. More than once I needed to escape the fumes of that small enclosed space.

I wanted to do color photography too but it was out of my budget range. That is when I began the Kodachrome transparency phase. Slides were convenient and eminently portable. Ciba-Geigy marketed a unique kit for printing the color positives to color paper. Then I could shoot a roll of slides and print the few which were worthy of the cost of printing.

Back when digital cameras first appeared, I swore I would never "go digital". That was when the sensor would shoot only a 1 megapixel frame. Soon the resolution of the electronics increased until it rivaled film negatives.

I say all the foregoing as prologue to the idea which occurred to me all those years ago. There were places I would go or pass by at irregular but repeated intervals. These locations became the subject of my multi-decade studies of the aging of the subjects. Some of my examples are only a then and now comparison bracketed by 1975 and 2020, or similar intervals. Other examples are: then, later on, later on more, later on again, later still and now. These series are a bittersweet look at places and times which are now gone or nearly gone.

I used to pass the Water Street Inn on my way to State College, PA where I studied Hydrology. I love the sight of running water. The Inn was already in a state of decay and collapse when I first encountered her. But then my camera captured the nuances of the demise, attempted resurrection and ultimate destruction of that once bustling establishment.

Another place located along US 40 west of Frostburg, Maryland "collapsed in slow motion" in front of my camera over a 30-year interval until its final day and the debris was hauled away. I am saddened both by the ultimate and fully expected collapse and that there is little reason to stop on my journeys to get the next frame. Although unlikely, a new subject may one day spring up on that land and I hope to be alive to photograph it.

My most widely varied study is of the Borough of Braddock, Pennsylvania. Braddock is the location of the Edgar Thompson Steelworks, the site of a bloody strike-riot put down by Pinkerton Agent. The plane and town remain only as a remnant of their former glory. My earliest photographs date from circa 1975 and continue through the present. 

The early photo set were shot from one of the high floors of the now gone Braddock Hospital. The later pictures depict the continual and intermittent loss of one building after another as the town is being allowed to die. Each year I return to see the changes i fins more grassy lots where buildings used to be. Once on a July 4th, I shot a building constructed in 1909, next I have a photo of a bulldozed pushing bricks and broken timbers. Lastly the location is a grassy rectangle waiting for its next life.

 

  

 

 

These three photos are from my OpenSea.io collection titled simply "Braddock" . They are Non-Fungible Token images available for purchase along with the other 40 images in the collection.

My travels have taken me around the 48 lower states and for visits to some of the same cities and regions multiple times. The collection I have posted at OpenSea is my way of sharing that experience with everyone who will follow along in my travels.