Shadows on a distant wall
My cat, Balboa, gets credit here: if she hadn’t needed to go to the vet, I wouldn’t have driven by this vacant place and noticed what the low winter sunlight did to the dusty windows. And I wouldn’t have gone back a few days later to see what else was there.
It was a good find, and you’ll see more of this place. But for today, check out the way the peeling letters (that used to say “Sexton Automotive”) cast a shadow on that far wall.
Lubbock, Texas
photographed 12.24.2013
PS: Balboa is fine. She just needed shots. The vet called her a “big girl” which is a LOT nicer than saying she’s fat, right?
Posted on January 3, 2014, in architecture, Photography and tagged 365 photo project, abandoned buildings, architecture, black and white photography, industrial architecture, lubbock, lubbock texas, melinda green harvey, monochrome, one day one image, photo a day, photography, texas. Bookmark the permalink. 8 Comments.
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Reblogged this on What Light Through Yonder Window Breaks?.
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This is a great if disconcerting picture, at least for me. I love to look through windows into the unknown rooms and mystery of other lives – an innocent hobby from childhood train-riding when rapidly passing windows changed scenes, like a primitive TV, in long gone days before everyday cars and actual television. I am disconcerted because I look into a large intact window but I see what looks like an out door scene. Rationally I understand that the inside of an automotive shop cannot look like sweet intimate dinner-table gatherings, but emotionally I am dejected by this ‘false illusion’ to my little girl’s curiosity… and in addition I cannot see the dilapidated sign that starts with that interesting 3 letter word. So it seems to me that I am also missing out on something…
PS: I apologize for the super lengthy comment, (I wont’ do it again) but I wanted you to know what your images can evoke in the viewers on so many levels, besides the purely visual stimulus which so often really soars (roars? also.). This often happens to me but I do not go into ‘the levels’ of awareness that you raise from the dust of visceral memories – you give us slices of life even if maybe you do not know it.
All in all this image – for me – soars, roars, and teases.
(Glad Balboa is fine!)
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Vera, please don’t apologize for a lengthy comment! You can leave long comments any time you want!
I can relate to what you said about looking through windows from a train. I haven’t ridden many trains, but I like to peer into windows, too. In fact, after my first visit to Chicago, when I saw a dance lesson in a room that was just a few feet from the elevated train tracks, I wrote a poem about it (and now that you’ve reminded me of it, I’ve posted it over on my writing blog: http://wp.me/p1fbv0-2D). There’s just something about seeing someone else’s life, I guess, even if it is for only a split second, that appeals to me.
It’s impossible to gauge the effect that a photograph will have on someone who sees it, and I am glad to know that my work touches some strong reservoirs of memory with you.
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🙂 🙂
I like this one a lot, Melinda.
Thanking Balboa!
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Thanks, Lisa. I’ll pass your comment along to Balboa, if I can catch her between naps….
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Good to hear that Balboa is fine, and not fat.
This shadow is more like a staircase than a shadow, which for me really makes the picture a bit hard to absorb since what it is and what it looks like are really at odds with each other – in my brain anyway.
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So, those shadows didn’t look like stairs to me at all. Until I read your comment. Now I am all confused.
Also, Balboa actually is a little…plump. I think the vet was just trying to be nice.
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