Timeworn and Abandoned
The Aged Surfaces of Sacramento Valley Towns
The Sacramento Valley is my home. I am familiar with many of the communities in the area, but there are many I have never stopped to visit. Some of these communities are names on exit signs I pass along I-5 or names I've long seen on the map. I wanted to put a sense of place to those names, and so I set out to visit many of these communities and simply take photographs of what I found interesting.
As I took weekend jaunts out to these communities, I found I was drawn to old structures that have fallen out of use or were just worn by time, such as closed workshops, old churches, abandoned gas stations. Each of these seemed to tell a story about what it might have been like when these buildings were new and people in the community shopped locally or attended the local church or had their car looked at by the local mechanic.
As I look over these photographs, I feel a sense of nostalgia and a touch of sadness--a sense of loss for the communities that were held together by these local gathering spots. However, I also feel a reverence for these structures, as I'm bearing witness to what once helped hold a community together.
Even though what I present here is a look at the aged surfaces, many of these communities in the Sacramento Valley--outside of the frame of these photographs--are alive and well, with contemporary shops and a strong sense of place. In the end, I hope the viewer finds something in these images that might intrigue them to take that exit off of I-5 and see what these little communities are like.
