This summer Satch and I drove up the Lake Michigan shoreline during the week of July 12, Satch's birthday and our anniversary. We stopped along the way in search for materials for Satch's art. We spent a couple of great days in Ludington. While scouring the town and nearby countryside for rusty and other intersting stuff I began to see that many of the working class neighborhoods were in decline. A little research revealed that Ludington has an unemployment rate of 12.5% and negative job growth. Obviously the economy and the shifting sands of business relocation were taking a toll on this beautiful, small Lake Michigan harbor city.
While this particular trip was not about making photographs, I had my cameras along and kept them close by. After stopping at a neighborhood shop to acquire more Satch materials, what I had been seeing in the non-tourist areas of Ludington came into focus and I needed to make photographs.
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| Snapshot by Satch |
An abandoned corner store stands next to two abandoned houses, one of which has brush growing up all around and even out of the edge of the house's foundation. On the street by the houses are two streets signs proclaiming that between them only "One Hour Parking" is allowed and the corner store has two signs in windows that lets passersby know that financing is available for any income or any credit!
I made three photographs, two of which I selected to show. The one of the two attractive, yet abandoned little houses prominently shows the brush and the two parking signs. In the photograph of the store I wanted to show a bit of the surrounding environment which makes obvious its prominent corner location in a neighborhood that continues to exist against the odds. I continue to dwell on and think about the metaphor of the fragile network of wires that connect all of us and supply our power for technology and communication while bypassing this abandoned business.
