I love black and white, but for this series, I needed colors.  It is like I have an automated LUT processing in my head. There is reality, there is my perception of reality, and there is my interpretation of my own perception of reality. 
Then there is what I want to share in a photo. 
I shot this series with the Samsung WB210. Turns out I like this little camera. Especially for this kind of work. I have all the time I need, and no one to be a nuisance or a distraction. That is what is great with ghost towns.
This ghost town is so deserted and abandoned that there aren't even any ghosts. They left too. Like me, they don't want to be here.
Some would argue this is not reality but only my own biased representation of reality. They would be right. Isn't that what art is about? Who would like me to share what they think is or call reality?
Maybe this is not a real ghost town. Maybe ghosts don't exist. It doesn't matter. I'm sharing my own vision. Like it or not, see something or not, get anything from it or not. It's the same in the end. That won't change my reality.
After all, maybe there are thousands of happy people behind these closed blinds and doors. Maybe they are alive. 
Who cares? I don't. 
What is hiding behind those broken windows, those dirty walls falling in ruins, and those metal bars, and those ugly blinds is irrelevant. I don't see that. I don't feel that way. All that is available to my senses are some billions of photons reflected by impassable surfaces. Then my camera captures some other billions of photons. It's already not the same. It is simply not real at all. If it is not real, is it nothing? 
My feelings, emotions, sensations, whatever I can name them, seem real to me. 
Emphasize SEEM.
It is for sale, for rent, abandoned, deserted, falling apart. Kind of a reflection of myself. I'm just shooting a mirror. I'm just trying to correct the geometry and perspective in that mirror. And that too is not real. The more I correct it the more it becomes distorted. Parallels want to meet somewhere out of the frame. But they won't.
It is all an illusion. Straight lines are curves, curves are straight lines. It is finally the perfect place for ghosts. But ghosts left. Or they don't exist. And I'm the only ghost walking the streets of this ghost town. Like a vague remnant of myself, like the dead who doesn't want to cross the threshold and stays forever in a doomed eternity, doing the same shit again and again.
Is it going somewhere? I don't feel it. It looks like a trap, you find an exit that is just another point of entry to the same hell. What is left to do? Simply taking photos. Again and again. like a priest exorcising again and again the same demon that doesn't want to leave.
It won't change reality, won't change the perception of that reality. Won't change anything really.
It's rust, and rot, and houses painted in blood.

You may also like

Iphone Xs in the Grand canyon
2023
Phone can't take good pictures. Or can they?
Ice and Frost
2021
Winter is here. With the cold, first snow, and lot of ice and frost. I'm focusing here on the tiny ice crystals I can see eraly in the morning.
Heat
2020
I love heat. I'm never more happy than when temperature is 100. I love the sun, the sensation of heat on my skin. Maybe I should live permanently in a place like Death Valley. It's pretty boring from a photographer point of view, but at least climate is just right for me.
A walk among the tombstones in black and white
2021
An abandonned old cemetery in the moutain. These are the black and white images.
Lost in a golden forest
2020
I am less and less interested in reality. My photos are less and less meant to depict that reality. I want, I need, my photos to depict what I see, what I feel, and that is not what is commonly accepted as reality. This old golden forest may not be old, or golden, or even a forest. And that doesn't matter.
Lost in a white old forest
2020
Sometimes, a forest is just a forest. Sometimes, it is much more. Or something completely different. With climate change, snow where I am right now became pretty rare. As soon as I saw the first snowflakes falling from the sky, I got ready for some cold adventure.
Into my darkness
2021
From the book "Into my darkness".
Emulating the Tri-X
2020
The T-max 3200 was one of my favorite film, but the TRi-X 400 always was my absolute favorite: I could shoot it from 400 to 3200 (and sometimes more) and always loved the rendering and grain quality.
Night walk
2020
Insomnia, boredom, loaded battery, unusual warm weather and the certainty of being totally alone during a stupid pandemic: that can only end in a night walk shooting stuff.
Monsters in the woods
2021
The world is full of invisible monsters. These are the monsters I see when I walk in the woods.
Back to Top