N 1st St & Dickson St. St. Louis, Missouri
Just under two years ago, the start of my graduate studies at Columbia College, I came upon an jewel in the rough so to speak. While navigating google maps for a specific location to shoot in St. Louis, Mo. I stumbled upon a section that showed an earth work in an abandon lot. I was so fascinated by the idea, and the location of this piece in the middle of one of St. Louis’s most run down an vacant areas that I wanted to make a photograph about it. The image below.
Over the recent holiday break, I began thinking about that photograph again and decided that instead of relying on the technique of comparing and contrasting I would instead work with and through sequencing. Giving just as much visual impact for the sat image to be appropriated and stand on its own. So recently armed with the knowledge that DigitalGlobe had launched their new WorldViewI satellite for Google I was hopeful for a better resolution of that particular lot. With that in mind I should have known better. Now old buildings and structures are magnates for real estate developing. However, unlike most cities the historical protection of St. Louis architecture is practically nil. Instead of the macabre work around of gutting a building and leaving its skin they just bulldoze it to the ground and haul away the fill. Recently this particular area in St. Louis has been green lit for on shore gambling and the future site of a new four-lane bridge spanning the Mississippi. It is changing at an alarming rate. The lot and its airplane is nothing more than a fresh layer of turned up “lot rubble”. Once its wings spanned the entirety of that brown lot. Now the only evidence is access roads and well-worn tracks from trucks hauling away the bits of turn of the century masonry and glass. Yet carefully and almost hidden at the base of a high gain power line was an insignificant and rather crude Smithson-esque spiral. So who is creating these things, and for whom?
