september 12, 2021
Bit of a longer one today - I'm gonna put it beneath the fold, so as not to clog up your feed!
At this point if you've been following me for a bit you've probably seen my photographic fascination with this place. It's called the International Car Forest of the Last Church; it's an art installation off of US-95 in Goldfield, Nevada, which is to most people a speed-trap town with all of 250 people and a mediocre diner (seriously, I've eaten at a lot of small-town diners; they are the only ones I've ever seen mess up scrambled eggs).
It is not a highly-trafficked art installation like Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, TX is, so it's usually secluded, and it feels a lot less curated. It also photographs and impacts differently, thanks to its sprawling structure; only bits and pieces ever seem to make good images, unlike Cadillac Ranch, with its compact and terse statement on American car culture.
I've shot it twice now - once on my initial discovery of Nevada's deserts, in 2021 (when I took this photo) and once as the final arc of my digital photobook The Pilgrimage, which I shot, edited, compiled, and published in a manic three-day period of creativity last summer.
The first time I went it felt symbolic of rebirth. I had just suffered a mental breakdown a week before after prolonged periods of... basically homelessness after my van (that I lived in) had been broken for months; now here I was, standing tall among the husks of ruined cars, with my freshly-repaired van (and a freshly-reinvigorated-and-medicated self). I solely observed and photographed what I saw, in awe of the ethereal qualities of the desert. Baptized, if you will.
The second time I went, I used it as a... well, a church. I brought spray paint and an empty estrogen bottle, methodically painted a car in trans colors, and left the vial in my makeshift altar I'd created. I wanted to be an additive part of the process, and make art by taking an action about something important to me. Praying, if you will.
I am agnostic (and it is not a church), but I have continually found catharsis there. There's something strangely calming about being allowed to be part of a collective artistic process and having your own small part to play in a living art installation. I don't know when or if I will return, but I'm excited to see what I can do next time; I already have ideas.
