Time Passing
I started this project with two aims in mind. The first is technical: learning to shoot with medium format film and to take advantage of the deliberation invited by its slow pace and occasional surprises (such as a leaking film back.)
The second aim is more interior. These are the outbuildings on the Edgemont Farm where I grew up in eastern North Carolina. Its layout was rather formal, with two rows of neatly aligned barns flanking a grove of oaks. In the center of the grove was an overseer's house, but when my grandfather bought the farm he moved it to one side to make room to build his new home.
I grew up in that overseer's house, living there until about 14 when my father built himself a new home a slight distance away. We played in all the barns shown here, building forts in the haylofts of the mule barn and the cow barn. In the pack house we mounted a basketball goal; shots of over 20 feet had to get over the wind beam.
Quite a bit is gone now, some 50 years farther along. One key structure, the "shop" burned down quite a while ago. With the cows and mules gone, those barns were repurposed to shelter mechanized equipment, becoming gap-toothed in the process. At least a third of the oaks have been destroyed by lightning. The rest will soon follow, as the property has been sold for the construction of a major railroad freight depot.
There is a particular presence in places like this. Here especially.
