Lost America :: Photography of the Abandoned Southwest

Troy Paiva is a designer and artist who, in a quest for means to be creative outside of his heavily art-directed nine to five job, took up photography. He'd been traveling the Southwest for much of the 1970's, and since 1985 has been photographing some of the great abandoned wastelands of Americana using a technique called light-painting. The result is an visual feast for nerds like me called LOST AMERICA.


Pontiambulance, via Lost America Flickr.

Light painting is, in essence, shooting a long exposure photo (camera on a tripod), typically at night or in a low light setting, with a light source being the only thing that moves, allowing you the ability to, in Paiva's case, highlight different areas of the scene with different colored light sources. (He uses flashlights or strobes covered with theatrical colored gel filters.)


Rasta-ribbean, via Lost America Flickr.
He truly has a massive portfolio of work done this way, and most importantly to me, a slew of photos from old junkyards, collector car scrap yards, and various other galleries of automobile related polychromatic magic. Most of the the locations that Paiva shoots in are either in such disrepair he is putting himself in harm's way for the love of his work or he is forced to trespass on the property to get the shots he wants, giving him serious badass bonus points. But he does what he does for the benefit of people like you and me: preserving the last remaining remnants of an era long gone, of a time when our country felt new and full of hope and (outlandish?) dreams.


Dart Seneca, via Lost America Flickr.
Unsurprisingly, many of the places featured in Lost America have completely disappeared, either and the hand of man or by the ever erasing scheme of nature, so it is a blessing to have this work to look back on. For more, check out the Lost America Flickr page and hear Troy Paiva give an interview on the technique involved in capturing these images.

Another Icon Passes On

Almost everyone in America is familiar with this icon image of a young sailor in Times Square on VJ Day, August 14, 1945, smooching the bejesus out of a lithe young nurse, in one of the most palpable images of spontaneous passion I've ever seen. It was photographed by Alfred Eisenstaedt, a German-American photojournalist known for his candid portraits, specifically this memorable snapshot, most shot with a Leica M3 rangefinder camera.

Well today marks the passing of Edith Shain, the lucky nurse in that photo. Eisenstaedt was in Times Square as the end of WWII was announced, and went to photograph the celebrations. He remembers the moment thusly:

In Times Square on V.J. Day I saw a sailor running along the street grabbing any and every girl in sight. Whether she was a grandmother, stout, thin, old, didn't make a difference. I was running ahead of him with my Leica looking back over my shoulder but none of the pictures that were possible pleased me. Then suddenly, in a flash, I saw something white being grabbed. I turned around and clicked the moment the sailor kissed the nurse. If she had been dressed in a dark dress I would never have taken the picture. If the sailor had worn a white uniform, the same. I took exactly four pictures. It was done within a few seconds.

So much was happening so quickly he didn't have a chance to record the names of the couple in the photo. For years no one knew who the woman in that classic photograph was, until she came forward in the 1970's to identify herself. The identity of that sailor remains unknown.

Hellooo, ladies!

Sometimes, being lazy has it's benefits. For example, you can tell I clearly have been mega slacking on the whole Rod-A-Day thing. I was so psyched at first about it, I even created a whole Flickr group for the cars I was going to post every day. People could submit their stuff for me to talk about on this site...you get the idea.

Well, I made it, and then basically nothing happened. I spent weeks just searching around Flickr for cars I wanted to write about and adding them to the group, which was fun, but eventually I realized I was spending immense amounts of time surfing tons of photos, most of which had nothing to do with the East Coast (I try and keep it real, here) and I just didn't have the free time to keep up at that pace.

Then today, I while searching for new desktop wallpaper (ha), I noticed that I had a big chunk of new images waiting to be approved in the Greaser Garage :: Rod-A-Day pool. WTF!? People are interested! People had actually submitted their shit to my group. Un-frickin-believeable. YOU CARE! YOU REALLY DO! I have renewed faith in humanity.

So, I'd like to take this moment to highlight some non-car related material that was submitted to the group that is just superb...






Rebecca Gohl is a retro-stylist who works photo shoots out of Grand Rapids and is just killin' it at bringing out the buxom best in these lovely ladies. I was happy to see some quality pinup-photography in there as well. Good on you, Rebecca! Keep those photos coming!

UPDATE MADNESS!!!

Madness? Really? Ok, so it might not be much, depending on your definition of madness, but I updated the site with a bunch of new images today. Actually, the sad part of technology is that what took me an entire day to do (scanning, photoshopping and uploading old 35mm photos) will take you a fraction of an hour to look at. ...I'm going to try not to think about it.

First, I finally got all the images I took at the KKOA show back in June together and posted for you to check out both below and on the RODS page. (I'm still working on all the captions, so cool yer jets.)


Kustom Kemps of America Sled Scene East 2009
Want more? Well aren't you in luck! A few weeks ago I found three rolls of undeveloped film while I was cleaning up the house, so I got them developed and a week later (that's how long it takes the drug store to process film these days), voila! Turns out two of them were photos from the NSRA East show at the York Fairgrounds in York, PA from either 2000 or 2001, I can't really tell which.


A few selected images from the set.
Again, if you're interested, you can check them all out in their own set on Flickr until they are all here on the site, in one neat and tidy little place. I've been having some trouble deciding if I should just give up making individual pages for all these car show photos and just link solely to the Flickr set, but really, there's something kinda special about having all your web content in one place to look at. Makes shit easier, right? Probably.

I'm starting to realize why I had neglected this website for such a long time previously; having a full-time job (or I should say, being one of the lucky people I know who still has a full-time job) is really cutting into my "being productive in other more exciting areas of my life" time. Yeesh. I'm going to do my best to keep this stuff coming and still get at least four hours of sleep a night so, enjoy it while you can!

KKOA and a ROD-A-DAY

This past weekend the main squeeze and I traveled back to my hometown in PA for some much needed time away from the grunt and grime of NYC to do some grilling and clean our lungs out for a few days. While there, on Saturday evening, I finally realized that ("supposedly"...more on this in a second) the annual Kustom Kemps of America Sled Scene East show at Oakside Park in Biglerville, PA was going on this same weekend. I say "supposedly" because while the local paper in my parents' town claimed the show was in full effect, all I could find online was a random smattering of internet notices saying that the 2009 KKOA show had been relocated and would never again be held in Oakside Park. Instead, from now on it will be at the Mason Dixon Dragway in Boonsboro, Maryland, about an hour south of its former locale. As far as I'm concerned, it seems like a great venue switch, if only for bathrooms that aren't porta-johns and the fact that you can sign up to drag your car against anybody else you've had in your crosshairs to race.

The only sad part is that this means there's one less interesting thing to do in Gettysburg, PA at any given time of year.

Regardless, Mark and I had seen a few old cars in town and traveled up there on Sunday to see if there was any roddin' goodness left to be had. While there was, it was pretty sparse and pretty short-lived. (At least by then we weren't charged admission and they were giving away free fruit salad at the snack bar.) I don't know if some people showed up there because they were confused, but we at least got a handful of great shots of the cool cars that were still hanging around.

Until I get a chance to upload all of those images, in the meantime, let me give you this - our very first ever "Rod-A-Day" photo, from Brad Lehman (assumedly) via his Flickr account...


From the KKOA '08 Sled Scene East at Oakside Park
There are oh soooo many cars I come across in my daily Flickr travels, not to mention being a part of several auto-enthusiast photo groups on the site that I figured I'd share some of my favorites with all my lovely garage-goers. The idea being that these will eventually appear every day at the top of the "Rods" section of the site (once I get that up to snuff...) and I have created my own Flickr Group in hopes that you'll be able to go back and view each of the previous "Rod-A-Day" vehicles, in case you were lame and missed a few days). Maybe if I'm lucky, some of you will sign up and send me photos of your own rides you'd like to see featured on this site. I'd love to be able to get all the nitty gritty details about people's cars, which isn't always possible when it's a photo of somebody else's car and not your own (like above).