unintentional emulation
Chuck Kimmerle: An excellent landscape/fine-art photographer:
When I look at Chuck’s photos – especially those of old farm machinery and agricultural structures – I almost get a sense of deja-vu in recalling photos that I’ve taken in the past. Growing up a photo-brat on the dividing line between sprawling suburbia and endless farmland, there were ample subjects to be found. Even though I went to school at a district that would later be the first school in the area to issue a laptop to every student, you could still count on getting stuck behind a combine or a hay wagon bulging with baled straw when autumn came around.
I remember shooting roll after roll of T-Max, exploring the collapsed barns and abandoned farm machines South of our home. The inner workings of these things and places weren’t as interesting to me as their appearance – they simultaneously symbolized livelihood and obsolescense, and juxtaposed the ever-advancing (and moving, and growing, and adapting) agriculture industry with the embodiment of the casualties of progress. I relive the experience every time I smell old grease mingling with galvanized steel, or feel the oddly smooth texture of oil-seasoned wrought iron that has finally yielded to rust.
More recently, a few of my photographs have evoked the same feelings – and seeing Chuck’s “Abstracts/Miscellaneous” section reminded me of one in particular, which I shot as the sun was setting on the first day of Kelly and my recent annversary trip:
Even though many of the windows of the Canandaigua Elks Lodge are boarded up, and the tarnish on the building’s exterior is evidence of the years it has seen, the neon sign presses on proclaiming the endurance of the place – just as the times embodied in images like this persist despite ingenuity and advancement, reminding us occasionally to slow down, and pay our respects to all that has come before us to bring us where we are.
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