Crumbling Jungle

The burned out timber and peeling paint of rust-belt America (“Where all local aspiring photographers go to cut their teeth,” as noted by Adam Sekuler, recent Pittsburgh tourist) are ripe for a new breed of urban opportunists and reverent reconnaissance.

In anticipation of our August 7 program, VANISHING RUINS: VISIONS OF DETROIT, I direct your attention to the perversely appreciative hobby of urban exploration, and these images of apocalyptic Detroit.

If you can’t make a pilgrimage to Pittsburgh, Akron, Allentown, or Detroit, come to the screening in veneration of our country’s romantic industrial disintegration. Filmmaker Brent Coughenour will be there, as will many former denizens of cities that once were.

Condos on Wisconsin Street

A great tragedy of the American West is the automobile’s destruction of nearly all the small towns, bringing ugly and sprawl in equal measures. The only towns that seem to have escaped it are those that never grew much, like Index and Union Gap, Washington.

Yesterday, I visited another great small town, this one with a fantastic town square, Tieton. I forgot my camera, but this photo says it all:

A single ring of commercial buildings surrounding a central park, surrounded by a handful of homes and warehouses, and not much else. In this small town, Ed Marquand and Michael Longyear are building Mighty Tieton, an artists’ community with galleries, condos, and a common gathering hall. The old apple warehouse is large enough to shoot a film in, the surrounding countryside inspiring, and the sun shines nearly every day of the year. Will they succeed? Who knows. But I love their ambition.