while sleeping

the home becomes

concrete and

infinite in absence

dylan reads

by the river

beginning bethlehem steel

visit to bethlehem, pa / spring break

div three!

old ghosts at skillman

kay and drake buildings
35mm
(2005)

the graveyard

sal . vage
noun

1. the act of saving a ship or its cargo from the perils of the seas
2. the property so saved
3. the act of saving anything from fire, danger, etc.
4. the property saved from danger
   

small growths

moss and/or tenacity at the salvage yard

a proposition

[squareamerica.com]

the photographic component of my division three, perhaps

I hope to explore social, cultural, and economic capital in terms of the death of the American Dream and social mobility. My fieldwork will take me to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where I will use Bethlehem Steel, as both a locus for this investigation and as a metaphor. The images will concern the transformation of space over time and the constantly changing meanings people ascribe to previously inhabited and now abandoned areas. I hope to photograph Bethlehem Steel in a way that challenges the viewer to reexamine a space that, at one point, was a factory of time, labor, sweat, and sometimes death. In romanticizing these spaces, I would like to understand how we might use beauty as a coping mechanism in both dealing with past toils and reconciling present strife in economic and social modernity. I am curious to photograph allegories within Bethlehem Steel that convey perhaps a quiet solitude or innate aesthetic that partially masks but ultimately recreates a historical context. I hope to create portraits of space and landscape that convey an investigative and aesthetically aware sense of the passage of time.

ramblings

[squareamerica.com]

thoughts on division three/thesis:
the sociology of memory ; the death of the american dream
photographs and writings

social and cultural capital - the accumulation of collected histories
bethlehem steel - the rise and fall of community labor
the monolith - romanticizing the past through imagery :
"people died here"
the metaphor - beauty is our coping mechanism