(*) There is a house...

(Click on the image to enlarge)

"Untitled" (part of a personal study on passing of time)

© Flavio Martín Morante_2012

After getting the necessary permission, I finally made my way to photograph the abandoned house on Hawthorne Road, not far from where I live. I been fascinated with this house for quite a while, but I did not wanted to go just because it is one of those photographic "fetishes turned into cliches", but because there was a deep reason behind that fascination. So to give an idea, it took me around five years (not kidding) to cross those gates yesterday, and there was a mix of feelings to which I can only put words to, but to explain them... that's another matter. A morbid curiosity, fascination, wonder, or call it "something" invaded me as I walked around it, like if I was unlocking some type of mystery that in reality it existed only in my head.

Despite of having seen many interesting abandoned places through time, I always do a mental effort to be able to see or imagined them as the way they may have looked on their "better times". Who lived there, since when, how long, why they left, why no one took interest on saving the place?, etc, etc, are the questions that jump right at me, at the same time that I tend to associate the place with particular periods of history to which they may have belonged. But there is a question, where is that people now? that finds a mirror in another object I have interest too, the so-called "found photographs". Discarded pictures, like the ones you find on flea markets (see below), antique shops or garage sales can make me spend some nice time looking at them in pure wonder. Who is this people?, are there descendants from them?, where did they lived?, were they happy?, what happened to them?, etc,etc; but above all, what made that photograph to exist today (implying what made the person to take it or to have it taken)?, as if  they are the still standing remains of someone's life. And the first word that comes straight as somehow of an answer is: immortality.

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"She" (On her Sunday Dress) / Unknown author. Titled by me. 

From my personal collection (part of a personal study on passing of time)  

Found on the flea market Maxwell's Days

Cedarburg, Wisconsin, 2011.

So yesterday, as I submerged myself in the remains of someone else's life, I wondered about myself and our idea and desire for immortality that express itself on many different ways by what we leave behind purposedly, be through blood descendants or through material possessions (the ones we possessed or the ones we have created in order to do not be forgotten), and found an open window that presents answers with even many more questions.

(Click on the image to enlarge)

"Untitled" (part of a personal study on time passing) 

© Flavio Martín Morante_2012

Deeply thankful to Bob Wirth for granting me unlimited access to the house.

(*) The title for this post comes intentionally from the first words of "The House of the Rising Sun" of unknown/not established authorship but performed by The Animals", by who I heard this song and which the lyrics have an associated meaning by me with what I wrote here. You can hear the song by pressing play below.