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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Forty One: Ruins and wrecks: photographing the rusted, busted past > Dreamscape, Bodie State Historic Park, California, 2006
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21-OCT-2006

Dreamscape, Bodie State Historic Park, California, 2006

To capture the essence of a ruined town, I look for ways to abstract, imply, and symbolize, rather than merely describe its appearance. The 19th century window glass in many of Bodie’s windows offers a perfect reflective surface for my purpose here. The old house reflected in the widow is split and dismembered. It almost seems to be moving between the panes in the window. Much of Bodie’s charm rests in the domain of the human imagination. And so does my expressive purpose here. My viewers can take this picture of a reflection and make of it whatever they wish.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ50
1/100s f/4.0 at 30.9mm iso100 hide exif
Full EXIF Info
Date/Time21-Oct-2006 07:51:40
MakePanasonic
ModelDMC-FZ50
Flash UsedNo
Focal Length30.9 mm
Exposure Time1/100 sec
Aperturef/4
ISO Equivalent100
Exposure Bias-0.33
White Balance
Metering Modemulti spot (3)
JPEG Quality
Exposure Programprogram (2)
Focus Distance

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Phil Douglis24-Nov-2006 18:27
Once again, your imagination is given free reign here to make of this place what you will. You feel what I saw and felt as I made this photograph, Mo.
monique jansen24-Nov-2006 14:27
You evoke the ghosts of a time past very well here. Eerie footsteps in a ghost town. Reminders of people long dead now. Very melancholic.
Phil Douglis06-Nov-2006 18:38
Yes, speaking eyes, Ai Li. We have seen much discussion of the role of your own eyes in your own self-portraits, and now you carry it over to this image made in an abandoned mining town. The windows are indeed the eyes of this house, and I've fractured them -- broken them just as this town itself has been broken by greed, time, and the elements.
AL06-Nov-2006 09:54
Wonderfully seen and abstracted. I kept looking at the reflected window of the old house, as if it's trying to lead towards me and say something. If our eyes are windows to our soul, are windows the eyes of the house? Speaking eyes...
Phil Douglis31-Oct-2006 18:26
A fractured place. A perfect phrase to sum up the nature of Bodie. And that is what I've tried to say in this image. Thanks for these thoughts, Jenene.
JSWaters31-Oct-2006 17:18
Another geometric framing - this time the glass is intact - offering visual proof of the spirts that roam through this fractured place. Everything glows with the presence of something intangible.
Jenene
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