Making Photographs In Franklinton, NC

exploring former boom towns and how we move forward.

Making Photographs in a North Carolina Boom (and bust) town

Julie: “So what are we going to do on our anniversary?”
Me: “I dunno, I just want to get out of Raleigh.”
Julie: “Where ya wanna go?”
Me: “Up. Always up.”
Julie: “So… north?”
Me: “Sure, what the hell, north sounds good. Let’s roll!”

Planning is Overrated

Exploring the town

Julie: “You think we’re gonna see Daryl?”
Me: “Who the heck is Daryl?”
Julie: … long pause and sideways stare …
Me: “Oh, damn… we ARE on the set of the Walking Dead!”

The Vault for Cotton Mill Millionaires 4 images

Reflections, Rest, & Revenge3 images

Southern Charm Can’t Be Killed

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
and before the street begins,
and there the grass grows soft and white,
and there the sun burns crimson bright,
and there the moon-bird rests from his flight
to cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
and the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
we shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow
and watch where the chalk-white arrows go
to the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we’ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
and we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
for the children, they mark, and the children, they know,
the place where the sidewalk ends.

• Shel Silverstein

Reflections, Relics, Rebirth

“Ultimately everything depends on the quality of the individual, but our fatally short-sighted age thinks only in terms of large numbers and mass organizations…”

Carl Jung from “The Undiscovered Self”

“Instead of the concrete individual, you have the names of organizations and, at the highest point, the abstract idea of the State as the principle of political reality…

…Instead of moral and mental differentiation of the individual, you have public welfare and the raising of the living standard. The goal and meaning of individual life (which is the only real life) no longer lie in the individual development but in the policy of the State, which is thrust upon the individual from outside and consists in the execution of an abstract idea which ultimately tends to attract all life to itself.

The individual is increasingly deprived of the moral decision as to how he should live his own life, and instead is ruled, fed, clothed, and educated as a social unit, accommodated in the appropriate housing unit, and amused in accordance with the standards that give pleasure and satisfaction to the masses.”

Carl Jung from “The Undiscovered Self”

Revitalization

“The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.”

• Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Last night, while I lay thinking here,
Some Whatifs crawled inside my ear
And pranced and partied all night long
And sang their same old Whatif song:
Whatif I’m dumb in school?
Whatif they’ve closed the swimming pol?
Whatif I get beat up?
Whatif there’s poison in my cup?
Whatif I start to cry?
Whatif I get sick and die?
Whatif I flunk that test?
Whatif green hair grows on my chest?
Whatif nobody likes me?
Whatif a bolt of lightning strikes me?
Whatif I don’t grow talle?
Whatif my head starts getting smaller?
Whatif the fish won’t bite?
Whatif the wind tears up my kite?
Whatif they start a war?
Whatif my parents get divorced?
Whatif the bus is late?
Whatif my teeth don’t grow in straight?
Whatif I tear my pants?
Whatif I never learn to dance?
Everything seems swell, and then
The nighttime Whatifs strike again!

• Shel Silverstein

Relics from the era of North Carolina manufacturing. 3 images