Brushed Sheet Metal: Near Baker, CA

This pile of scrap metal made me think of vacancy, and abandonment, and how quickly things can become lost.  I wondered how long the metal had been sitting there – what would it be like to see the world that way: decades, alone with the sky, the changing seasons, the dust, the blazing sun?

I see a lot of things in this photograph at once: curtains flapping in an empty window; thick smoke curling from charred wood; layers of dirt and clay; floating faces.  It seems subdued and severe, impersonal and fragrant, harsh, chaotic and post-apocalyptic.  It reminds me of how Stephen Crane described the killing fields after the wars in "The Red Badge of Courage".

There's a feeling of melancholy in this photograph, but also one of hope: a slight sense of being at the bottom and looking up.

Brushed Sheet Metal: Near Baker, CA, 2008