the arched window

Renewal

2011-12-23T12:37:00.000+10:00

It seems strangely apt that this blog about abandoned and forgotten things has been abandoned for the past year. There have also been apt reasons. Four months after I started this blog, I had a very close encounter with ruin and abandonment on a personal scale: my house was flooded in the Brisbane floods. The floods came on so suddenly on January 11 that by early morning on January 12, my partner and I were trapped in our high-set house by floodwater that was six feet deep in the front yard. Ultimately, the water was knee-deep within the upper level of the house.

We lost perhaps 25% of our possessions; we were very grateful that the damage was not more extensive (on the plus side, we no longer have any furniture from the 1970s!) We were very grateful to be able to stay with friends for the next two months while our house was repaired.

In June, my poetry book, Electricity for Beginners, was published. And then in September and October, I went to the United States and visited New Orleans and Detroit. In New Orleans, I spoke to a woman whose house was ruined by Hurricane Katrina. A life-long New Orleans resident, she has not lived in the city since the storm. In Detroit, I had the remarkable pleasure of meeting and exploring with DetroitUrbex. I also went to Easthampton, MA and met up with Stacy from House of Mirth. It was invigorating to meet up with so many wonderful people, all of whom were very generous with their time and their stories.

In short, it's been a busy year, and for a while I thought I'd abandoned this blog for good. But I haven't. I'm back. Here we go again.

Also Speaks Croatian

2010-11-21T13:51:00.010+10:00

In 2002, Princeton Architectural Press published a book of posters advertising missing pets. Lost: Lost and Found Pet Posters from Around the World was the idea of Ian Phillips, an illustrator who had been collecting the posters for years.

In a short essay in Lost Magazine, Phillips says that the book contains his favourite posters from his collection. These posters have the quirkiest of pleas and missing pets; the poster that Phillips found most disturbing was the text-only:

LOST BLACK LAB
No collar, No legs,
NEEDS Medicine!!!
Ask for Unca Tom Jennings

Phillips asked friends throughout the world to mail him any posters that they found (after photocopying and replacing the images), and that is how he managed to amass an international collection that covered pets including ducks, lizards, and hamsters.

I thought of Phillips's book today when I found a lost-pet poster at my local shops. It was taped on a fire hose cupboard between a pizza restaurant and a bottle shop. It doesn't have cute illustrations like most of those in Phillips's book. (It does have a passer-by's silly comments and corrections, though.) But it still made me laugh really hard.

Pinky the Indian Ringneck sounds like a remarkable bird. He's worth the reward money and then some.

Personally, though, I would have mentioned his Croatian language skills right at the start.

Vintage snapshot galleries

2010-11-09T20:57:00.016+10:00

While collecting vintage slides or snapshots is not the most popular hobby in the world, there are certainly plenty of people who share my interest. I have spent the past few days researching some of the online snapshot galleries, and will discuss some of them in coming weeks. The one that has most interested me over the past few days is project b, which is the work of Barbara Levine, a curator, artist, and author.

Project b is a beautiful site, and I like the way Levine categorises the images according to subject matter—the "unusual and funny" category currently has a great picture entitled Woman in Gas Mask. What I like most of all, though, and what I am longing to buy, is Levine's series Finger in Your Eye. It's a collection of snapshots in which the subject is partially obscured by the finger of the person taking the photograph. As Levine writes, "because the fingertip shown in the photo is the photographer’s, we become aware viscerally of the relationship between photographer, subject and camera. We immediately wonder about the photographer and their relationship to the people or things in the picture."

In a lovely essay about snapshot collecting, Hannah Lifson writes: "Often discarded by their owners for their muddled images—in other words, their inability to describe their intended subject clearly—'mistake' photographs are accidental hymns to the unpredictability of life itself."

Project b made me think about other kinds of mistake photography, or photographs with unexpected effects. A brief search soon led me to a flickr group dedicated to collecting vintage snapshots that contain the photographer's shadow. The snapshot Two Women in Dresses with a Shadow (above), is from another group, Vintage Shadow People. It's not the finger of the photographer this time, not an actual part of his or her body that has made its way into the shot. It's a shadow, which is intimately the photographer's and yet not a possession at all.

How does this all relate to what is abandoned and lost?

I am not entirely sure. But it's making me think again that perhaps my real interest is not in things that are lost, but in things that are on the verge of being lost. Things caught between worlds. Maybe that's what the link is. I'll keep on thinking—and looking—until I work it out.

Zone of Alienation

2010-10-28T21:20:00.014+10:00

The other day, my friend Michael showed me an article about Chernobyl in the Sydney Morning Herald. The funny thing about the article was its placement: it was in the travel section, because it was about Chernobyl tourism.

Apparently, people now pay $US160 to visit the site of the 1986 nuclear explosion at Reactor No. 4 that killed or will kill between 4000 and 8000 people, depending on which report you read (according to WHO, the number of deaths attributable directly to radiation from the blast was about 50 and they occurred mainly among rescue workers; effects on the broader population will take a much longer time to determine). It also resulted in the evacuation and resettlement of 350 000 people, and left 4.5 million people living on contaminated territories (as at 2000).

I was a kid, not quite ten years old, when the explosion happened. Chernobyl and AIDS were the two major catastrophes that horrified my child self in the 1980s. The television coverage of both left me completely terrified of sex and nuclear power for a while. Actually, I've never really lost my fear of nuclear power. The thing that struck me most at the time about Chernobyl was the kids who were affected by the radiation, and who would go on to suffer, among other problems, a higher rate of thyroid cancer.

One of the Chernobyl tourists interviewed for the SMH article admits that she feels uncomfortable photographing the site: "It's too early maybe. There are a lot of people still alive." I wonder what she means. Is it easier visiting ruins where those who once lived there are long dead? Possibly. And what does this mean for our relationship to contemporary ruins?

This image of gas masks on the floor of what I believe is an abandoned school is from Timm Suess. At his blog, Suess gives a detailed and fascinating account of the two days he spent at the Chernobyl blast site. He writes of driving into the abandoned town of Pripyat, which was home to around 50 000 people at the time of the blast: "The average radiation level in the field is around 50 uSv/h (300-500 times higher than normal) with pockets of up to 10 000 (50 000 -- 100 000 times higher than normal). That’s where we stopped and got out of the car."

Suess's reports are absolutely rivetting. The question I can't stop asking myself is: could I do it? Would I go to Chernobyl and Pripyat?

Would you?

Cherry Tomatoes and Abandoned Lots

2010-10-27T16:59:00.004+10:00

Walking along Milton Road yesterday morning, I was amused to discover that the former Milton Bowl and Tennis Centre site is a place of far greater riches than I had previously imagined.

It doesn't only grow couches and empty cans of bourbon and Coke. It also grows perfect, abundant, gorgeous cherry tomatoes.

What does this mean? It means that an abandoned lot grows better tomatoes than I do. Sigh.

Heirlooms

2010-10-18T18:54:00.013+10:00

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to a colleague about my interest in abandoned buildings and ghost towns. Cherie told me she'd just heard about a surprising group of people who shared my interest: heirloom plants collectors.

Of course, whenever people abandon houses or homesteads or farms, they also abandon plants. And some of those plants don't notice they've been abandoned, but just keep on thriving.

Modern farmers and the companies they sell to desire high-yield, easily transportable, and broadly appealing fruits and vegetables that store well—so we consumers end up seeing remarkably few of the diverse range of varieties that were once available to us. But we run the risk of losing some varieties of plant altogether.

It is this kind of thoughtless loss that the seed saving movement works to prevent. Groups such as the American Seed Savers' Exchange and the Australian Seed Savers' Network enable their members to broadly share and swap the seed that they save. This work is so important because it is the antithesis to the aims of companies such as Monsanto, the seed and pesticide multinational that has gained ill repute for its methods for engineering the continued dependence of farmers on Monsanto products.

The image that struck me most of all in Cherie's story, though, was her mention of heirloom roses. Apparently the best way for collectors to locate them is to visit old cemeteries and take (very careful) cuttings. Memorial roses are planted atop graves, nurtured, and continue to grow undisturbed for decades in many cases. "Rose Rustlers" often find roses that haven't been seen since the 1850s.

Thomas Christopher, author of In Search of Lost Roses, says that at the start of the 20th century, rose growers focussed their attention almost solely on hybrid tea roses, which were most popular with buyers. "The other roses," Christopher says, "the heritage of 2,500 years of breeding and gardening, disappeared from nursery catalogs and eventually from gardens, too. They were lost and presumed dead until a handful of imaginative rosarians made it their business in the 1970s and 1980s to search out specimens surviving in abandoned gardens, cemeteries, and other inadvertent sanctuaries."

As for me, I am not a great gardener. My last attempt at growing tomatoes ended two weeks ago, when a single, yellow grape tomato fell off my sole remaining tomato plant. (It was not a tomato bush. It was brown, leafless, and shaped like a question mark.) But maybe what I need is a better kind of tomato: something hardy, something that's survived in this particular climate, for decades. Maybe I need an heirloom.

Here's author-grower Tim Stark showing some of his heirloom tomatoes:

Lost Detroit by Dan Austin and Sean Doerr

2010-10-08T19:32:00.003+10:00

Today I came across a great article about abandoned Detroit. Now, I just need to get a copy of Lost Detroit: Stories Behind the Motor City’s Majestic Ruins by Dan Austin and photographer Sean Doerr.

I want this book, and I want it now! I may have to get it from Amazon to get overseas shipping, though . . .

I thought the Ball season was over

2010-09-30T19:26:00.008+10:00

I grew up surrounded by antique postcards. My dad, who hides a strong romantic streak beneath his larrikin exterior, once helped a bloke clean out a shed or move a heavy piece of machinery or concrete a driveway--I forget which--and was repaid with thanks, beer, and a huge box of antique postcards from the turn of the 20th century. The man had thought they were rubbish, but they piqued my father's interest. From time to time when I was growing up, I would pull out the cardboard box he stored them in in the wardrobe and sift through the postcards and greeting cards. I liked how ornate they were, and was puzzled by how little these people said to each other--and by their copperplate penmanship.

Now, I find myself similarly interested in old postcards. While I suspect Dad was fascinated by the cards for the historical images that they showed, and for their potential value to collectors, I am more interested in what people write to each other.

I found some brilliant postcards in an antiques shop in Eumundi last year. Here is my absolute favourite (the front is above).

An observant friend noted that George might very well be a newspaper photographer or journalist, hence the typewritten note and the need to attend various balls in a professional capacity. Whatever his story, George sounds like a real character to me.

Requiem for Detroit

2010-09-27T22:04:00.003+10:00

Over at Abandoned Places, I found a link to a brilliant documentary called Requiem for Detroit. Directed by Julien Temple, the documentary examines the past, present, and future of Detroit. It blew me away. (The music's pretty good, too!) Temple has also described his experiences in this Guardian article.

eBay Memories

2010-09-18T16:00:00.019+10:00

When I began to buy strangers' slides from eBay, I did it because the slides intrigued me. Very soon, though, I was also intrigued by the slide-buying phenomenon itself. These slides were items that most people would consider to be worthless--dusty old relics from dead people's garages. But I wasn't the only one buying them.

I started to wonder about these other bidders. Who were they? They were bidding often, and bidding high, on some of the listings. This was also true of the old photographs and vintage movies that I was stumbling upon. Super 8 home movies from the 60s and 70s: I coveted those, too. But the Australian dollar was terrible, and shipping was a fortune, and I simply couldn't compete with buyers who would pay over $100 for a few reels of Super 8. I bought what I could afford, if I loved it, and also began to research the world of the collectors of old movies and photos. I still don't know much about how people use old movies, but I know a fair bit now about found slides and photographs.

Thousands of people collect these abandoned or "found" photographs and slides. The photographs might have been found left behind in books, or on buses, or in an old suitcase that's ended up at a garage sale. They might have been deliberately lost, after a divorce or a break-up. They might've ended up with a dealer when a whole estate has been sold. Some of the images are beautiful. French collector Michael (Banlon1964) found a gorgeous shot of a young Austrian man posing on the beach (above). Most found photographs are far less striking for their beauty, but some are remarkably moving.

Professional artists, too, work with found photographs. I am particularly fascinated by the 1991 works of Joachim Schmid, Photogenetic Drafts, in which he splices together two portrait photographs to create a portrait of a person who doesn't exist.

The images came from a portrait photographer who had cut all his negatives in half before discarding them. In Schmid's hands, they results are amazing, as is evident even from this one example.

There are online galleries that showcase and even sell found photos. I wonder if anyone much buys them? I have not bought any photographs--not from eBay or from anywhere--just transparencies. For me, it's the experience of viewing slides that's really evocative. It's so sensual: the sound of the slide machine (motor whirr and cartridge clunk), the smell of warm cardboard and warm dust, the dust motes dancing in the light, the encroaching darkness, and, there in front of you, the past, in colours that somehow seem brighter than life.

Slides

2010-09-15T18:48:00.006+10:00

A couple of years ago, I stumbled across some 35mm slides for sale on eBay. The slides interested me precisely because they were so damn average: they were some family's 35mm slides of vacations and birthdays and Christmases.

The images looked familiar, even though these families were American and I am Australian. The boys wore stripey t-shirts like my brothers wore in the late 70s. The plastic Christmas trees looked just like the kind I was used to. And as they blew out the candles on their birthday cakes, the kids in the pictures looked just like kids I knew growing up. Some of them looked like me. I knew what it felt like to be pausing in that moment, waiting for your mother to press the camera button. I knew what it felt like to wait there, chest full of air, lips pursed, as your friends crowded around you, expectant, in cone-shaped party haps secured by thin, tight elastic.

I had to buy those slides. Even though I didn't know the kids, the families, the locations. I knew some other stuff. I knew things about families. Or maybe I was motivated by what I don't know about families. Either way, I bought those slides, paid the outrageous shipping fee, and within weeks, those images were in my house.

More slides followed. I had a new obsession. Most of the images had come via estate sales. I knew nothing of their history. Sometimes it was even hard to determine the relationships among people in the slides. Were they cousins, or friends? Sisters, or neighbours? So much was lost.

I invited friends over, and we speculated on these people and their relationships. Their likes and dislikes. Their foibles and secret desires. They were strangers from another country, and another time. But for now, they were pure light, and they danced on a white sheet on my living-room wall.

Milton Bowl and Tennis Centre

2010-09-12T12:18:00.010+10:00

While I definitely want to travel to research abandoned sites and lost things, I also want to sniff out what's close to me, in Brisbane. So this morning I went walking in my neighbourhood.

I live close to the site of the former Milton Bowl, a bowling alley and live music venue that opened its doors in 1962 and closed in 2008. The building was demolished in 2008 or 2009. While the site is not abandoned--in fact, there's been heated debate over development plans for the area--it is currently vacant, so it interests me for that reason.

The development plans also encompass the adjacent site of the former Milton Tennis Centre, which opened in 1915 and hosted the first Australian Open in 1969, as well as concerts by the Rolling Stones and Johnny Cash. It had nineteen hard courts and four grass courts and seated 7000 people.

The tennis complex was before my time, unfortunately. But I did bowl at the Alley, and had a few drinks there.

These images show what the site looks like today: there's still some trace of the courts, but the area is mainly rubble and weeds.

There's an abandoned couch that overlooks an improvised skate ramp, and there's a single-bed mattress. Skaters used to go there at night, and I guess people are still getting some use from the area, because last night we saw fireworks exploding in the sky in this approximate area.

The area provides a pedestrian shortcut from the Rosalie-area houses to Milton Road, so as I showed up today, there were three couple strolling through here with babies in prams. I kind of liked the contrast.

Michigan Central

2010-09-10T19:28:00.004+10:00

Here's more information about Detroit's abandoned high-rises from Environmental Grafitti. The article pointed me in the direction of the Michigan Central Station, which Mark H. Baker captures in this great image. The station was built away from the downtown area of Detroit, which ultimately proved its downfall. The last train left the station on January 6, 1988. The Detroit City Council voted to demolish the building in 2009, but those plans have been put on hold due to heritage concerns.

Abandoned Detroit

2010-09-10T17:50:00.004+10:00

I think I want to go to Detroit, explore, and write about what I find. It's a city that has been abandoned by a large number of its residents, for a range of reasons. It has some stunning abandonments, which a lot of people have already documented. There are some breath-taking images on the Detroit urbex site.

I particularly want to see Lee Plaza, of course. Lee Plaza is a vacant high-rise apartment building that was built in the Art Deco style in the 1920s. It closed in the early 1990s. Rana Xavier's image of an abandoned piano inside the abandoned building will show you why I want to go to this place.

Spaces

2010-08-31T20:10:00.006+10:00

What is it that makes abandoned or lost objects, derelict spaces, and obsolete technology so interesting, and what makes them seem to share a kinship? Maybe this: they all live at the edges of things. And they all leave space for the imaginary.