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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Nineteen: Conveying a Sense of Place – A Town of Ghosts, Frozen in Time > Vintage Tires, Bodie, California, 2004
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17-OCT-2004

Vintage Tires, Bodie, California, 2004

I shot these dust-covered balloon tires through the window of a long closed store. To me, tires symbolize progress and transportation, and Bodie, which reached its peak of popularity in the 1880s, was basically a horse and wagon community. Yet here were these old tires, stacked away near the window of a local store, dust covered icons of progress in a town were progress was once measured in body counts.

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Phil Douglis27-Feb-2005 05:20
You and I see things in much the same way, Norah. Bodie itself was a time machine. I wish you could have been there with me. At least these images seem to be taking you there! It was an accumulation of stuff that has been kept there, deliberately gathering dust, since the last settlers moved out. These tires were a perfect example. As you say, they are ideal abstraction material. You don't have to show a lot --only parts. They are very simple. Black on black. Dirt on dirt. They show use and wear. They are emblems of time, Zandra. And as you say, not just time stopped. But they take us back to another time as well. Every bald spot, every blemish, has a story to tell, and your imagination will tell it to you. The tire is the trigger, your mind will do the rest. And that's the way it way it was with Bodie, the town, as well.
Guest 20-Feb-2005 10:47
This is such a great and simple way to freeze time Phil. Old tieres, i don't know what it is but they kind of appeal to me. It is probably just that...they freeze time. Not showing any suroundinggs as you do here makes me able to place those tires in any time that i feel like, which would be a time that facinates me personally. Another person may choose a difrent time as that is what would apeal to them. So this is not only stoping time, it is in a way also acting like a time machine. We can move around in time and space and build our own world around those tires.
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