Invited guest: Robert Padilla
Part of progress has always been to forget about the past.As cities grew across America, roads were moved or re-routed, often displacing whole towns and economies. The demand for efficiency and a network of interstate highways has left a the broken bones of buildings and the craggy spines of two-lane highways behind the blurry traffic of billboards and cars.
Amid the weeds and trees, hidden in "dead-end" areas of America are places like, Glenrio. Positioned quietly on the border of Texas and New Mexico, this place whispers rather than yells. Lost to time and the world, the town's hotel signs creak in the winter breeze, sadly beckoning travelers who never venture into town. It's scant homes and cafes are littered with the items of life, abandoned suddenly, as if some spaceship abducted every man, woman and child and vanished into the ether.
The archeology of a mere 50 years seems fascinating, not because of its monetary value, but because it makes a statement about how quickly we move on and how disposable everything is. Our need for more never has mercy for what is or what was. We tar over and nail shut everything that we see fit to. We rarely have reverence for those things that do not glitter and shine with the brilliance of aluminum. The old brick and wood, the intricate and ornate architecture of a century ago, and the artistic uniqueness of something hand-built has given way to those bulldozers with too little time to bother.
As I travel across the West, I feel compelled to make as many stops along these forgotten places as possible. I'm inclined to document them, to somehow preserve even the smallest idea of what they were, before they disappear completely. I think of talking to my children who have not been born yet, and expressing something ineffable to them; a texture, a smell, or a feeling of nostalgia.A photograph hardly does justice to a place, but maybe that's all we'll have to describe our world in the future.
Leaning against a wooden post, I notice that termites are undermining the wood at the base of the building.
I've found these abandoned stationes somewhere in a site flooded by pictures (on which we all live now). I've felt in love with these immediately. So I wrote to the author and he asked me to write something in Polish for him and for Polish viewers of the Fblog.
Nie pozostaje mi zatem nic innego do zrobienia jak spelnic prosbe Roberta i pozdrowic wszystkich tych co rozumieja ten jezyk. Fblog dziekuje za przyjecie zaproszenia i mozliwosc publikacji tych wyjatkowych zdjec. /specjalnie bez polskich znakow,zeby Fblog to przezyl/
/invited by Joanna Kinowska/
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