akahawkeyefan's photostream  

I like old things, although I hate growing old. I like just poking around in old houses, office buildings, industrial sites, graveyards, ruins of any sort and abandoned places. Sometimes I take pictures as hostages. But what draws me to these subjects more than anything else is the thought of what has transpired within and around them. The idle daydreams, the boredom of repetition, industrial grief, illicit assignations, bone shattering personal revelations thundering through the psyche, quiet desperation of resigning oneself to the inane and mortality itself. Finding the skeletal remains of a piano near June Lake, I ponder whose fingers plied the missing keys bringing forth soothing Brahms. Or what raucous melodies rang out. And whose ears, over how many years, heard and were lulled into the momentary deceit of a tranquil existence. When one looks hard at the decaying railway station, the ghosts of long departed passengers can be imagined milling about. The Swedish immigrants arriving and the boys going off to war. They pass under the now faded sign announcing San Francisco 225 miles to the north and exotic New Orleans 2261 and four tenths miles in the other direction. Now the station houses only pigeons and awaits the wrecking ball, or the careless itinerant's spark. These and a million other things are in these places. I marvel in their existence which I know is palpable. I want to know all of them, and wonder where they now reside. What form do they take when the lumber, steel, concrete, teddy bears and wheelchairs are turned to dust? Do they linger in the mist or, as the ashes of the cremated cast to the winds; float in the air; drown in bodies of water; or remain buried with the detritus in a landfill. Whether I be voyager of voyeur, how I long to know all this and more.

I originally had another Flickr account, and somehow managed to not be able to access it, so I had to start anew with this one. My other images can be found at:
www.flickr.com/photos/bosshogg/