Some new photos from Fort Wayne

I have subscribed to this thread, and with each new update i am amazed at your ability to capture the essence of a bygone era. Your images are fantastic, Chris! The stories with each photograph really allow the viewer to grasp the significance of these places in time.

Best regards,

Kent
 
nortons-motel-4.jpg


Here is one I scanned last night, from my archives.

Unopened mail gathers dust at the front desk of Norton's Motel, and a couple of missed delivery notices from UPS hang on the window above an American flag sticker. This abandoned motel is on Maumee Avenue across the street from the Omnisource metals recycling yard on the east side of Fort Wayne.

I shot this in 2010, and it had been abandoned for a few years before that. Earlier this year, someone renovated the rundown motel, added another building to it, and reopened it for business.
 
public-schools.jpg


This old school bus sat at the Fort Wayne Fire Department's training facility, along with several old cars and trucks that were used for training firefighters to rescue people from burning vehicles. I thought it was fnny that they replaced the name of the school that the bus originally belonged to with a generic "Public Schools" sign.
 
nortons-motel-5.jpg


The office of Norton's Motel, an abandoned motel on Fort Wayne's rather rough east side, was attached to the old house next to the parking lot. The word painted on the door is "Welcome."
 
mount-tabor-baptist.jpg


Mount Tabor Baptist Church had been abandoned for a while when I made this photograph of the storefront church's building at the corner of East Washington Boulevard and Walter Street on the east side of Fort Wayne, Indiana. It was demolished in 2012 to make way for a new building at Indiana Tech, whose campus can be seen across the street. I made this photo in March, 2010.
 
Chris, does the urge to photograph abandoned places come from a fascination with the absence of people where they were once active, or is it a desire to document things before they disappear, or is it something else... or all of the above?
 
rohankent said:
Chris, does the urge to photograph abandoned places come from a fascination with the absence of people where they were once active, or is it a desire to document things before they disappear, or is it something else... or all of the above?
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Both. I have a masters degree in history, and am interested in the history of the places, the people, the architecture, the culture. I am also fascinated by how people live and why they do things like abandoning a house. I've found the most interesting things left behind, including a wedding dress and a house full of old dolls.
 
Chriscrawfordphoto said:
Both. I have a masters degree in history, and am interested in the history of the places, the people, the architecture, the culture. I am also fascinated by how people live and why they do things like abandoning a house. I've found the most interesting things left behind, including a wedding dress and a house full of old dolls.
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I've been inside two abandoned places near where I live. One is a two storey timber place with a serious lean to it and a great big hole in the side. It looks like an archetypal haunted house. I got the nerve together to venture upstairs (feating the whole house would fall on my head) and found a strange mix of things: old iron beds, art deco arm chairs, a pair of seventies baby blue men's pants on a coat hanger in front of a fireplace, and some George Benson records scattered on the ground. The second place, on a different turf farm, was completely devoid of objects and felt kind of soul-less, but there were swallows that would descend from a hole in the ceiling and fly circles around the room as I was photographing.
 
rohankent said:
I've been inside two abandoned places near where I live. One is a two storey timber place with a serious lean to it and a great big hole in the side. It looks like an archetypal haunted house. I got the nerve together to venture upstairs (feating the whole house would fall on my head) and found a strange mix of things: old iron beds, art deco arm chairs, a pair of seventies baby blue men's pants on a coat hanger in front of a fireplace, and some George Benson records scattered on the ground. The second place, on a different turf farm, was completely devoid of objects and felt kind of soul-less, but there were swallows that would descend from a hole in the ceiling and fly circles around the room as I was photographing.
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Wow that sounds incredible. Did you get any photos?
 
Yeah, I took quite a few. I'm hoping I get something good from it. At the moment I've got 10 rolls of 35mm of various stuff that I've self developed, but I haven't bought a scanner yet (stupid, I know), so I only have a faint idea of what I've got.

I'm fascinated by all this stuff, and I'll return to both places, hopefully with more appropriate gear (I only had a 50mm lens).

Have you ever had any issues with going inside places... confrontation, safety?
 
rohankent said:
Yeah, I took quite a few. I'm hoping I get something good from it. At the moment I've got 10 rolls of 35mm of various stuff that I've self developed, but I haven't bought a scanner yet (stupid, I know), so I only have a faint idea of what I've got.

I'm fascinated by all this stuff, and I'll return to both places, hopefully with more appropriate gear (I only had a 50mm lens).

Have you ever had any issues with going inside places... confrontation, safety?
Click to expand...

I've never been confronted by anyone for going in an old building, but have had people stop when they saw me photographing the outsides of them. When I've told them what I am doing, they're always ok with it. Most of the work I do is in the areas around my hometown, where I am well known as an artist, so I think that helps.

Abandoned houses can be dangerous, and I have done some very stupid things in them. I walked up an icy stairway with no handrail once, while carrying a heavy tripod and a big bag full of Mamiya 645 gear. I cut my wrist on broken glass climbing through a broken window once, and had to get a tetanus shot. One old house had a partly collapsed floor in an upstairs room and I walked through the room, hugging the walls, to get into another room to shoot.

Do not do those things. Go with a friend, and carry a cell phone.
 
Chris, I've followed your work for some time now, but haven't commented until now.

Two things stand out to me, one being the absence of people in your images, which I can directly relate to because many of my street photos of Albuquerque are more like urban documents rather than people-oriented street photos.

The other observation is the quality of the light within your scenes, where it appears you remain very consistent to photograph under what appears to be cloudy skies, or at least absent direct sun, lending the sky an almost 19th century orthochromatic tonal range, and also giving very pleasing tones to your subjects, absent the harsh shadows of bright daylight.

In my neck of the woods, cloudy skies are few and far between, I'm usually stuck with having to deal with harsh light.

I really admire the consistency of your body of work, and how the quality of light helps it fit within a larger historic perspective. Thank you.

~Joe
 
reckeweg-barn.jpg


A lot of barns in rural Indiana are equipped with basketball hoops. This one on Reckeweg Road in Fort Wayne was broken! Despite the rural appearance of the area, this is in the city on a road that runs between two of the city's busiest roads. Fort Wayne has a lot of small areas that look rural, surrounded by more urbanized areas. I made this one back in August.
 
JoeV said:
Chris, I've followed your work for some time now, but haven't commented until now.

Two things stand out to me, one being the absence of people in your images, which I can directly relate to because many of my street photos of Albuquerque are more like urban documents rather than people-oriented street photos.

The other observation is the quality of the light within your scenes, where it appears you remain very consistent to photograph under what appears to be cloudy skies, or at least absent direct sun, lending the sky an almost 19th century orthochromatic tonal range, and also giving very pleasing tones to your subjects, absent the harsh shadows of bright daylight.

In my neck of the woods, cloudy skies are few and far between, I'm usually stuck with having to deal with harsh light.

I really admire the consistency of your body of work, and how the quality of light helps it fit within a larger historic perspective. Thank you.

~Joe
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Thanks, Joe. I understand what you're saying about the light in New Mexico. I lived in Santa Fe for a couple of years, and it was hard to get used to the constant sun. Indiana is getting to be more like New Mexico, the climate here is changing. We always had hot summers, but we also got a lot of rain. It typically rained one or two days a week here in spring and summer, so we got a lot of overcast days in the warm months. In winter, it was cloudy almost all the time.

In the last couple years, it has been bad here, we had a bad drought this year. I didn't do a lot of shooting this summer, because I'd wait for the few good days to go out photographing.

I actually had an easier time with New Mexico's sunlight, it seemed less harsh than the bright sun here does. Indiana is a lot lower in elevation than New Mexico, and we're up pretty far north too. That must affect the light. My son and I drive out to Santa Fe, then spent a couple weeks driving around New Mexico in the summer of 2011 and it was almost always sunny, but I got some great photos:

http://chriscrawfordphoto.com/chris-results.php?category=41
 
So much dilapidation and decay. Makes me feel sad, even if it has nothing to do with me. Someday your documentation of your local community will be appreciated Chris.
 
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