Tag Archives: book

Gary: A Texture Tour

Photographer Nick Forslund assembled a book for his senior art project at UW-Whitewater. Gary: A Texture Tour contains photos from our urbex trip to Gary, Indiana, which was funded by American Urbex contributors. I am thrilled that he used American Urbex and some of my own photos as a resource. The end product makes for one fascinating coffee table book. They are available for purchase at Blurb. We realize the cost is a bit steep, but there is no profit made at all on this product. Each copy is custom printed when it is ordered and the quality is amazing. In any case they make great presents for the holiday.

Congrats Nick!

The Day Kennedy Was Shot

The Day Kennedy Was Shot - Nov. 22, 1963

This photo was taken in an abandoned farmhouse in the Koshkonong, WI area. The property still has occupants and I did ask for permission to shoot on their land. The property owners do not wish to share their address and I must honor their wishes.

The house itself was in really bad shape. Water damage has caused the first floor to collapse into the basement. I was able to inch my way along the edges into one room that was filled with magazines, newspapers, and books. Most of the texts were illegible in the layer of filth that had accumulated. Tucked away on a shelf to the right was the spine of “The Day Kennedy Was Shot” by Jim Bishop.  I’m not a big fan of the Fuji F70 EXR that I took it with, but this is one of my personal favorite photos. Sometimes there isn’t much to shoot at an urbex location. Sometimes just one shot is enough to make the entire effort worthwhile.

Cormac McCarthy – The Road

From title page to last sentence there is sparse joy in Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road. Yet the few and far between moments of tenderness alone make the book a worthwhile read. McCarthy paints an engrossing world of pitch-black darkness, bone-chilling cold, and utter despair that has been rocked by some indescribable cataclysm. The unnamed main characters – the man and the boy – are making their way south on the road in the hopes of escaping the darkness that has swallowed society whole. As they travel the road the pair must scavenge for supplies in a landscape already torn asunder. Food stores have long been consumed and some have turned to cannibalism. The man and boy must remain ever vigilant as they traverse the ashen road, for they are “the good guys” in a world full of horror.

The scenes portrayed in The Road are not uncommon for experienced urban explorers. McCarthy is extremely adept at painting with adjectives to give the reader a frame of reference. (It was quite refreshing to read a book too, that I had to look up words I did not know the meaning of.) Urban explorers with be familiar with the themes of death, decay, and the fragility of human existence that are portrayed in The Road.

The Road is one of the best books I’ve ever read, and one of the few that have brought me to tears. I never want to read it again, but the ending is phenomenal. Urban explorers won’t be disappointed.