ruin porn: south dakota style (take three)

this abandoned house has a bit more family connection. or more accurately, it missed having a family connection. it's apparently a house that my grandfather considered buying when he instead chose what is known in our family as "the house on the creek" (pronounced "crick").

with nine children, this house is bigger, so i can imagine that he should probably have chosen it. but i can also understand why he chose the other one, as it was tucked away down a winding road in a most charming way. tho' i have always wondered how they all fit in those small rooms. i can still hear my aunt saying, "this was the girls' room." and "this was the boys' room." pointing at two small rooms upstairs.

i haven't heard any tales of this house being haunted, but when i walked over to it to take photos, the hair stood up on the back of my neck. it's easier to visit these houses together with others - if you're alone, your imagination begins to work overtime.

i stepped inside to snap some interior shots and heard a creaking sound upstairs. tho' it was the middle of the afternoon and sunny and bright out, a chill ran down my spine. then i heard little footsteps - it was likely just a raccoon. but i'll admit i stepped back outside, in case it was a skunk. or something else.

this one did have a slightly more spooky look than some of the others we visited. big, square, imposing, windows broken, holes in the roof, peeling paint. it just had a spooky air about it.

these old houses only whisper their stories and it's hard to catch those whispers. there is a sadness and a haunted quality about some (but not all) of them. i wonder what they think of being allowed to fall apart? i wonder if they care or if it makes them sad? i wonder if somehow they hold within them the echoes of those who lived there, even when they're long gone? i wonder if those voices can still be heard, if you listen in just the right way?

exploring these old houses was one of the high points of our trip. they fascinate me. i think i'm not done pondering why.

minimum maintenance: ruin porn, south dakota style (take two)

we found some more abandoned barns and farmhouses today, down the minimum maintenance roads. i cannot express the delight we have had in exploring these. i know they contain the sadness of abandon, but strangely, we have so much affection for them - all three generations of us. it feels like moments of touching bygone days. and if you could just listen closely enough, you'd hear the whispers of those who lived there.

ruin porn: south dakota style

we had a most marvelous afternoon exploring old abandoned houses. we hoped to run into some ghosts (more about that soon), but other than one incidence of sabin hearing a voice, but not seeing anyone, we didn't have that much luck. we'll be doing this again before our trip is over. there are so many abandoned farmhouses in this age of big farms - it's no longer one family per property, so many have stood empty for years. they are both sad and pleasingly photogenic.

ruin porn tourism

one of the few signs of decay i've seen in denmark

i love a good ruin...falling down buildings in decay are so picturesque and evocative. some of my most powerful imaginings have been at ruins...whether it's standing on the plains at troy and almost being able to catch the sounds of battle on the wind or walking along the paved streets of ephesus at midday and imagining john the baptist and paul (misogynist tho' he was) treading there before me or whether it's the old house down on the creek where my father spent his early childhood. ruins evoke memory and emotions and are haunting somehow. and even more haunting if the pictures of them are without people - making the building or place seem that much more abandoned. there is a lot of emotion in such photos of decay.

what does it take for there to be decayed buildings in a landscape? time, for one. the ancient ruins dotting turkey, greece and the balkans, with the odd column sticking up in a field here and there, are just part of the landscape - the history of the place, as the sands of time pass relentlessly over it. on the prairies, it's a sign of the consolidation of all those small family farms into big corporate farms. and there's simply not enough people out there to be living on all of those little homesteads anymore, so some of them fall into picturesque ruin as they bake in the summer sun and are exposed to harsh winters.

somewhere near stickney, south dakota

i miss a good ruin in my daily life. denmark is too prosperous, too middle class, too neat, and perhaps simply too small to allow ruins to stand. one of my favorite exceptions is the old windmill above. but i wonder how long it will be allowed to stand in decay. it's probably violating some or other municipal ordinance in all of its shabby glory.

i feel like i'm hearing an awful lot about detroit lately. it seems it's become the archetype of an american city in decline. famous photographers take haunting peopleless photographs of its once grand buildings in ruin. and those photos are extremely moving. when i see them, it makes me want to go to detroit as a ruin porn tourist.  i recently saw some photos of an abandoned complex near berlin that made me feel the same way. but what are the implications of such voyeuristic practice? being a visitor to a contemporary ruin seems much more somehow violating than visiting ephesus or pergamon or the acropolis. it's so much closer and more raw. many of the buildings in detroit were still in use up to the early 90s, so the wound is quite fresh in a way. and is making a photographic essay of those once glorious buildings, empty of people, doing detroit a disservice?  the new republic thinks so. and so do the people who made this documentary.

what do you think?

she's back on that inspiration thing again

like many out there, i was inspired by the women of 3191, quietly, mindfully depicting their lives on opposite coasts. and again like many, i longed for such a project. one which would push my photography. one which would push me to be more mindful of everyday things myself. one which i would share with someone whose photography and view of the world inspired me. and i am so happy that i have found kristina and that project. we were just discussing last evening that we found each other thru the überfabulous sandra juto's blog. and we all know she's very inspiring too - so thanks sandra, you undoubtedly don't know it, but you brought us together. and i'm so pleased with what's unfolding.  both kristina and i were traveling last week and we're sharing our travel photos all week, but first, a little glimpse of the weekend just gone by. do go check it out here.

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as you all undoubtedly have noticed, i travel quite a lot. i need the excitement. i need the pulse. i need to see new things, to experience new things. going away makes me more grateful for home as well. in short, travel is a sort of life blood to me, keeping my perspectives fresh and my eye honed. it makes me tick. i was thinking about the things that i look for when i travel. i find i'm drawn to the familiar...

starbucks only recently came to denmark and it's only in the airport, so i associate starbucks with travel (sorry bill, i love a good starbucks latte, despite what they did to the sonics). and look how relaxing it is!

but mostly, i'm drawn to the strange, the unexpected, the challenging...

and i'm a sucker for a good ruin--tho' this one--newgrange, a stone age site, was a bit reconstructed (in the 60s, can you tell?) for my taste...

there were some marvelous petroglyphs (my beloved helleristninger) there, which i am certain will be showing up soon in my art.

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i've been vicariously watching the results of rachel's latest art journaling course go up in the flickr group and have been doing a bit of art journaling along with it...as you saw last month. and i've got a couple of pages going, where i have created a lovely background and i'm totally stuck on the words. me, stuck on words, imagine that. i wonder why that happens? i'm trying not to obsess about it and just let them come in their own good time and in the meantime, enjoy making pages that will be great bases for the eventual words.

* * *

hmm, what else inspires of late?

there's a lot of shoe and foot photography out there in the blogosphere these days and i'm finding it has made me a little obsessed with both buying new shoes and photographing them. hmm. i wonder if this particular bit of inspiration is healthy? got these in dublin (which you already know if you've been hanging out on twitter). they're super comfortable and they look pretty in the afternoon sun. 

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i find myself going back again and again to look at jude hill's marvelous spirit cloth creations. both on her blog and on flickr. her small quilted stories are so dense with layered meaning that i am just drawn to them and inspired by them. i've worked a bit farther on the first piece that has arisen from her inspiration and still don't know what it will be. i'm using it as an exercise in patience as well and just enjoying the process of watching it unfold before me and trying to listen to my inner muse when she tells me what comes next.

where are you finding inspiration these days?

there comes a time...

in all of my work-at-home weeks, i always reach a point when i think, "today, i shall bathe and get dressed and go forth among people. i shall put these sweatpants and this t-shirt that i've been wearing day and night for the past 3-4 days into the laundry basket and put on real clothing--like tights and a cheery dress. i shall behave like a human being today." it helps if the sun comes out. because cloudy, windy, rainy days only promote my hermit-like tendencies.

and then i was reminded of a place that could well be termed hermit heaven. it's called meteora and it's in greece. it's inland in north central greece, in a strange moonlike landscape, where these porous, harsh, rocky hills suddenly stick up out of the flat plain.

in this strange and rather mysterious place, monks built countless monasteries, high on the peaks.

eight-ten of them are still in operation and open to the public (if you like to climb), but there are many ruins around on outcroppings that look like they must have been impossible to reach. they are, to my imagination, impossibly romantic in their isolation.

there are countless more little caves hollowed out in the hillsides, where individual hermit monks went to be on their own. undoubtedly wearing the same thing for days on end and muttering to themselves and resenting intrusions, much as i do around here.

although i'm not fond of heights, i'm attracted to the idea of being somewhere where the only way to get there would be a ladder like this...

because you could see whoever was coming quite a long ways off.  and the sheer difficulty of it would put most intruders off.

i've been there twice, but feel its allure pulling me back, probably due the amount of time i spend alone, but also because it's a wonderful and mysterious place. maybe that's where we should go this summer.

but first, i should probably get dressed.

5 places i love - #5 ephesus

yes, turkey again. i'm in longing mode for turkey. it's brought on by having stayed home this summer and by the tickets i bought for october. 

ephesus is the ruin of all ruins. in my opinion, it's better than the acropolis in athens, tho' what's cool about that is it that it's in the center of a bustling city. ephesus can be quite over-run with tourists, but if you go during the heat of the day, which we always do, the crowds thin out pretty well.

these pix are from our visit 3 years ago, so sabin's pretty little in them. i remember we were trying to potty train her on that trip. she must have been three and a half. she remembers the trip well tho', and is also looking forward to going back.

here, sabin and i are walking along paths once trod upon by john and paul of biblical fame (and probably the beatles were here too at some point). there is even a legend that john brought jesus' mother mary to ephesus. paul wrote that little epistle to the ephesians while he lived here for three years. although i'm not religious, these biblical figures were real, historical people who lived and breathed in this place and i love thinking about that as i walk the stone paths. 

ephesus is very well-preserved, there are temples and an amphitheatre, arches, columns and even a rather large group toilet that's quite amusing. 

i absolutely adore this picture of little sabin, sitting below a statue of sophia, the divine wisdom. one of my favorite moments of the whole vacation that year. sabin's twin sister, who was stillborn, was named sophia, so it's that much more meaningful to me, the notion of the divine wisdom looking down on sabin.  this one is blown up and framed on the wall in our hallway.

ephesus is definitely worth the trip and i've already made a reservation to stay here, at a fantastic chill-out place nearby, where we stayed three years ago as well. we'll be there mid-october if you want to come and hang out.