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

Glimpsing the past, Bodie State Historic Park, California, 2006

There are very few places where a photographer can make an image that takes the viewer directly into the past. Bodie, carefully preserved in a state of “arrested decay,” is one of those places. We had a unique opportunity to shoot in this ghost town from dawn to dusk. This image was made early in the morning in strong sidelight. Bodie died in the 1940s, yet its power lines are still in place. Glinting in the sun, these wires lend an authenticity to the scene that would be missing if they were not there. This scene is exactly what a miner returning to his drafty frame home after a night shift would have viewed. Each of these buildings still contains whatever furnishings might have been left behind when the town died and its population moved away. Once again, I use a spot meter to expose for the highlights, letting the rest of the image fade into the shadow of the past.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ50
1/400s f/8.0 at 68.8mm iso100 full exif

other sizes: small medium large original auto
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Phil Douglis24-Oct-2007 19:34
Thanks, Zyziza, for your comment. You are right -- this what a miner, who had been working all night, might have seen upon coming home in the early morning, back at the beginning of the 20th century. Bodie was a hard place. Life was crude, dangerous, and exhausting. Perhaps the light dancing on the electrical wires would have brought at least a moment of pleasure. Thanks for imagining with me.
zyziza24-Oct-2007 15:00
looking like a miner returning..... v
Phil Douglis11-May-2007 03:57
Sometimes I look for the light first, and build my picture around it, Suwanee. Such was the case here. I saw the way the early morning light was illuminating the wires, and the rest followed. The spot meter was essential here.
Guest 11-May-2007 01:25
I absolutely love the lighting on this shot Also the consistency of patterns of the wooden cabins, the lines, the grass, and the ground are also amazing. All those elements convey peace and serenity.
Phil Douglis06-Nov-2006 18:54
Glad I can make you relive the past here, Ai Li. And glad, too, that you see it as glorious, even though you know that Bodie is dead, as are all of those who once lived and worked here. That's because this image has entered your imagination, and allowed you to build your own pictures of it in your own mind. The more fertile the imagination, the more it will see behind these long shuttered doors. And that, Ai Li, is what expressive photography really is. A partnership between my imagination, in making this image, and your imagination, in living in it.
AL06-Nov-2006 10:15
The beautifully lit houses, road and power lines did give me a flashback into the past. Everything seemed to be brought back to life and renewed. I could almost anticipate someone to enter the frame as he returned home and his family opened the door to welcome him. There's warmth, Phil, there's a glorious past, even without the future.
Phil Douglis29-Oct-2006 06:11
Bodie survived as a town until the 1930s, and died in the 1940s. So electricity, which was introduced in urban areas in the 1880s, was commonplace by then, even in the most rural communities. Bodie had a some wealth as well -- so it does not surprise me to find the old homes linked to electrical current. I love the way you see those insulators as decor, and how you see them as a harbinger of the future. Even though, for Bodie, there would be no future.
Guest 29-Oct-2006 05:35
These buildings with their furry grass feet stretching out into the dirt of the street appear to be on the verge of collapse, seeming to lean this way and that in their undecorated simplicity and barrenness. The lines with their décor of glowing turquoise insulators appear out of place, but also lead the mind forward into the future, and back before electricity came, as though Bodie had existed way before its date of expiration. Amazing to think of human beings figuring out how to lead energy through wires for miles on end, to illuminate such a humble place.
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