On the campus of Indiana University - Purdue University Fort Wayne (the schools share the campus), where I received my fine arts degree, there is a small wooded area next to the Saint Joseph River. One day, in my student years, I walked down there and discovered a magnificent old tree with a ‘hiding place’ at the bottom.
I returned to the little woods by the river several times over the years to photograph the Hiding Place Tree.
After I graduated in 1999 I didn’t make it back much. The campus on Fort Wayne’s northeast side was far from the places I lived on the southwest side of the city, and life got too busy.
A couple weeks ago I went out to the campus again to take my girlfriend out there for a meeting of a group she belongs to. While I waited for her, I wandered about the campus with my camera and made my way back to the woods. A concrete sidewalk had been built through the clearing that separated the woods from the riverbank. Change is usually not a good thing in a natural place. I walked back and my heart broke when I saw that the Hiding Place was gone. The tree had been cut down, and the stump where the opening was at had been split open. Here is the photograph I made of what remains, photographed when I found it just after the sun dropped below the horizon at the end of the day.
See the rest of my Forgotten Indiana project
This restaurant and donut shop on Blufton Road has been the popular hangout for all the old people in Waynedale as long as I can remember. The owner of Karen’s Kitchens recently retired and sold the business. The new owner is changing the name to Big Daddy’s Diner. Someone who owned it several years ago tried changing the name, but it quickly reverted back to Karen’s Kitchens. People here don’t like change.
See the rest of my Waynedale project
Storefront churches have always fascinated me. When there are so many congregations in more traditional looking buildings offering the full spectrum of Christian beliefs, who go to a little store in a shopping center for your religion?
This church is one of two storefront churches in the Waynedale section of Fort Wayne, Indiana. The Faith Bible Missionary Church is located on Old Trail road just south of Lower Huntington.
See more photographs of Waynedale
When I lived in Santa Fe, there was a weekly antiwar protest held every Friday at Noon near the city’s biggest intersection, the corner of Saint Francis Drive and Cerrillos road. I began hanging out with the protesters and photographing them. Over the year that I spent with them I became good friends with many of them and met some really interesting people.
This photograph was made last February. I have many of my photographs of the antiwar protests on my website already, but there are many more to add as I find time to finish working on them.
See the rest of my photographs of the Santa Fe Antiwar Movement
I made this photograph several years ago, and didn’t realize it wasn’t on my website until yesterday when a friend was asking me if I had any photographs of outhouses. I showed her all of them on my site (I have several!) and I couldn’t find this one, which I remembered making. I also have a print of it framed on the wall, yet I had forgotten years ago to add it to the website. So, here it is!
This outhouse was behind a barn on a farm in the extreme northwest corner of Allen County, Indiana near the small town of Churubusco. I think it was made around 2004 on a rainy summer day.
See more of my photographs of forgotten places in Indiana
Here are the last three photographs from a carnival I photographed in Santa Fe, New Mexico last fall. These were all made at night as the carnival was closing. The lights had been shut off on the rides, leaving only the food stands open a few more minutes to sell the carnival patrons something to eat on the way home.
See the rest of my Carnival series
This old theater at the Quimby Village Shopping center on Blufton Road in Fort Wayne was a place from my childhood. My parents took my sister and I there often to see movies, since it was the closest theater to our home back then. The theater has been closed for a very long time now, probably 15 years, though it housed a church for a while. It now sits empty.
See the rest of my photographs of Indiana’s forgotten places.
This is another of my photographs from my time in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This ride was photographed at a carnival that was set up in the parking lot of the Santa Fe Place Mall. They had carnivals there a few times each summer. I stayed a few minutes after the midway closed and made some photographs of the rides after the lights went off.
See more of my photographs of Carnivals
The old Prairie Grove Cemetery in the Waynedale section of Fort Wayne, Indiana was once surrounded by a beautiful wrought iron fence. Today, only a small section of fence remains near the little white chapel on Old Trail Road.
See more photographs of the little church in the Prairie Grove Cemetery
The Elzey building sits on Lower Huntington Road in the Waynedale area of Fort Wayne, Indiana. The old brick building serves as one of Waynedale’s main commercial buildings and it houses many of Waynedale’s locally owned businesses.This photograph was taken in the parking lot behind the building, and it shows the rear of the building and the rather ornate entrance to one of the upstairs apartments.
See more of my Waynedale Project
