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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Twenty Six : Using reflections to transform reality > Reflecting the past, Bodie State Historic Park, California, 2006
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21-OCT-2006

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

The Wheaton and Hollis Hotel locked these doors forever more than sixty years ago when Bodie, a gold mining site in the Sierra Nevada mountains, faded into a ghost town. Today, the glass in these doors reflects the Boone General Store that stands just across Main Street. The slightest shift in vantage point changes the pattern of these surreal reflections, letting me paint virtually any kind of picture I want upon those wonderfully warped glass doors. The doors stand under a canopy that shields them from stray light, offering a consistently sharp and saturated series of reflections. (It only works in the morning, however, when the sun illuminates the store across the street.) I choose to bend the reflections into a series of geometric angles, and waited for a visitor to stop in front of the General Store across the street. I integrate her into the design itself. In doing so, I am immersing her into the past, which is exactly what a visit to the historic Bodie ghost town in supposed to do.

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Phil Douglis02-Mar-2007 16:55
Glad you see all three time dimensions in this image, Ai Li. That was my intention here.
AL02-Mar-2007 10:45
These door give us a glimpse at the past with the weathered town, the present with the living visitor, and possibly the future with the imaginery-like reflection. I like the geometric element and the angles give a nice "twist" to the vision.
Phil Douglis24-Jan-2007 05:49
Delighted you see what I saw in this time warp, right down to your friend Yong reflected in the middle of the image. Using her as a focal point, I tried to integrate past and present to tell the story of Bodie as a ghost town.
Iris Maybloom (irislm)24-Jan-2007 02:13
We see the vestiges of time in the hotel doors and the warp of time reflected. Time has certainly weathered Bodie, but we can imagine its heyday and reflect upon its past through these images.
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