ST ALBANS & WEST VIRGINIA. SOME PSYCHO-GEOGRAPHICAL FIELD NOTES (II)

We pull over into the first Motel we see in St Albans. It was dark and the scattered streetlights had flickered on with a low sodium glow. In the office I was met by a friendly but slightly suspicious desk clerk of faded beauty and the first question she asks was if we were local or from out of town. This question stuck me as odd and when I asked her about it she picked her words carefully telling me she always liked to keep the locals and visitors separated and it was with this information she would use to choose our room. She was obviously hiding something and though she was genuinely glad to see us, her smile was nervous. Outside I began to understand why the clerk asked us this question as I started to see a few of these locals shuffling around in the darkness just beyond the streetlights dim illumination, half shrouded in the shadow, with wild unkempt beards, wearing dirty disheveled clothes and flashing their dark but fearful eyes in our direction “like Zombies” my brother whispered as we got back into the car.

Our rooms were located on the far side of the motel, detached from the main block and were comfortable clean and ordinary and we were happy to find them this way. After unpacking my brother and I left in search of food leaving my wife and mother in the room to settle in. Instead of backtracking on the Charleston road we decided to dive on further into the darkness of St Albans on route 60 and on a five mile drive found nothing open, but a long scattered line of neon-lit ‘Gentleman’s Clubs’, Adult Video stores and a biker bar which advertised it’s latest act on the roadside verge outside, simply as ‘Toothless Ruth’. All these dubious establishments had beat up cars and trucks parked untidily outside, all with their front wheels turned tightly inwards, as though they had swung in off the main road and parked in a hurry. There was not a soul to be seen anywhere. After driving some distance deeper into the dense forest darkness we rounded a corner and slowed down to take a closer look at what was called the ‘Playboy Motel’ which was a clap trap two story place, lit with buzzing neon, with a balcony which ran it’s length between the floors where bulging MILF’s in lingerie leaned over languidly blowing smoke into the insect infected night. On the ground floor the main entrance was guarded by a heavy man in a dark suit sitting in a chair, who surveyed the road like a machine and clocked us as we passed with hooded eyebrows. The place looked busy and I was instantly put in mind of ‘Ben’s Place’ from the David Lynch movie classic Blue Velvet. My brother and I looked at one another smiling in disbelief. “Where in god’s name are we?” he said.

After another stretch of darkness we eventually saw that unmistakable sign for McDonalds ahead of us, high up on a long pole above the tree line, ‘The Golden Arches’ as I have heard them referred to here with hideous affection. As we turned left into the shadowy strip mall where the ‘restaurant’ was located, I noticed that to our right, sitting on the river bank was some kind of military monument in the form a great cruse missile on a large stone plinth. It stood against the clear star filled night sky like some great erect penis, with its swollen bulbous war-head. This was a grotesquely fitting sight to behold after the drive we had just taken and the sights we had seen along the way.

Pulling into McDonald's, scantly dressed toothless teens chased each other around parked cars hissing at each other and cackling and inside we were met by a friendly waitress with a soft southern accent, who, recognizing our own accents, asked us lots of questions about where we were from and where it was we were heading, welcoming us to St Albans West Virginia with an almost poker face, which afterwards broke into a smile of long yellow teeth. We told her about our journey from the motel in search of food, this time with our own questions, and she began to tell us of the altogether more sinister town of Nitro which was located close by in what she referred to as ‘Chemical Valley’ and that Nitro was the true local den of iniquity which made St Albans look like nothing at all in comparison. Nitro was named after the nitro-glycerin powder and other explosives which it was the leading producer of during both world wars. Nitro, I later discovered, was also, strangely, the location of several sightings of the infamous and mysterious ‘Mothman’, a West Virginian legend who was said to be a tall and metallic looking supernatural or alien creature with shining red eyes and a giant 10 foot wingspan. The origin of this creature still remains obscure for me, but over the years has become the subject and inspiration for at least two Hollywood movies and the city is said to boast an impressive monument to it, based on its few eye witness accounts.

Part one of this account can be found here: http://simonkossoff.blogspot.com/2011/08/st-albans-west-virginia-some-psycho.html

ST ALBANS & WEST VIRGINIA. SOME PSYCHO-GEOGRAPHICAL FIELD NOTES (I)

St Albans West Virginia is a small town about 8 miles south of Charleston and is in many ways connected by a continuous line of roadside homes, strip malls and other local business’s which did not appear to separate the two towns in any discernible way and which made our eventual arrival there an accident. Thinking we were still in Charleston, our intention was to search for a cheap motel on its outskirts, but with each mile driven beyond Charleston’s invisible city limits, we became uneasy as the settlements became noticeably more ramshackle in appearance.

On our approach the atmosphere of St Alban’s began to assert its own distinctive and grubby fingerprint with a long string of ominous billboards advertising Quick Credit Debt Relief, Narcotics Anonymous, Religious Fire and Brimstone, Military Recruitment and the dangers of Crystal Meth.

Arriving at sundown in long shadow I had the strangest feeling we were entering a forgotten place, isolated and carved out of the thick forest which surrounded it and in many ways, the forest was indeed in the process of reclaiming it, as dripping vines threaded across the power lines above the road and were slowly beginning to suffocate any structure that had been left unattended for more than a few months. With the wide green and slow moving murk of the Amazon-like Kanawha River on one side and the ever closing forest on the other, it seemed like St Albans didn’t have a chance and the road which passed between both was the only thing which kept an open pathway, holding nature at bay.

Our arrival in St Albans came after a days driving south from Pittsburgh Pennsylvania on interstate 79 which at the West Virginia State line seemed to slice it’s way through this same dense landscape of thick forest on either side of the roadside. A forest which was dark, beautiful, oppressive and seemingly endless - layering away like a giant green steaming ocean to every horizon in every direction, rising up into the distant Appalachian mountains to the east and disappearing into a hazy almost tropical heat, obscured by low cloud and singing with a vast chorus of insects which never stopped. Apart from the beautiful empty asphalt ribbon of the road, the whole West Virginia landscape appeared empty of any visible human footprint and I was stunned again by the unspoiled vastness and beauty of the America beyond the city. It was only on our regular detours from the interstate that we came into contact with the existence of humans where narrow meandering roads wound through peeks and valleys which were littered with homesteads, farms, mills and sometimes coal mines which were all connected by the rail road; the main lifeline for these remote business’s and it’s mournful call could be heard like some huge prehistoric animal deep in the seemingly impenetrable forest.

Part (II) of these notes will be posted shortly.

Related posts from this road trip can be found here:

5 Postcards from Pittsburgh

http://simonkossoff.blogspot.com/2011/07/pittsburgh-pa-5-photographs.html

Niagara Falls, NY

http://simonkossoff.blogspot.com/2011/07/niagara-falls-ny.html

New York City (ASA Postcards)

http://simonkossoff.blogspot.com/2011/06/new-york-city.html

Preparations for the journey

http://simonkossoff.blogspot.com/2011/05/road-trip-nyc-niagara-falls-west.html

President (IV)

Thrift Store, Overland Park, KS

Lincoln, Topeka, KS

Obama, NYC

These images are a continuation of my series about the United States Presidents. This series is another of my long term projects which I began about a year ago and although the American presidents can be seen everywhere and often here in the U.S. I have found myself being extremely selective in my recording of them and the series presently only contains approximately 30 images to date and I consider it still very much in it's infancy.

Each United States President has become a kind of historical marker, defining a time, both historically and culturally. As an outsider, I have found it deeply compelling to see these powerful leading figures surface again from history, often unexpectedly and juxtaposed against the chaotic mosaic of present day life. In my continuing search to orientate myself within American culture, I have felt when photographing these sudden Presidential appearances, like I am somehow retrieving the memories from an Amnesiac. My intention with this series is to eventually have a record photographically of every American president and giving myself a psychic history lesson in the process.

I will post on this blog further encounters as they occur. Part 1, 2 & 3 of this series can be found here:

http://simonkossoff.blogspot.com/2010/02/president.html

http://simonkossoff.blogspot.com/2011/01/president-ii.html

http://simonkossoff.blogspot.com/2011/06/president-iii.html

Interview with Pistol & Fur

Recently I was interviewed by Jason Hynes the editor of the excellent UK photo collective Pistol & Fur as part of the promotion for the new limited edition book that the website have published. A collection of 49 photographs by 49 photographers, including myself. This is that interview illustrated with a selection of images which until now have not (I believe) appeared on this blog before.

INTERVIEW FOR PISTOL AND FUR WEBSITE

Where are you from and where are you going?

I was born in Middlesbrough in the industrial north of England, but grew up on the south coast. First in Dorset and later Brighton in East Sussex. After a lot of traveling, I now live in Overland Park, Kansas, but plan to move to Chicago this Autumn. In terms of my photographic life, I come from Black and White, Film, Medium Format and a disciplined darkroom practice. Now I work in digital with a small Leica and make pictures in colour. I love colour. For the last three and a half years I’ve been photographing America obsessively, but I feel, as I’ve become more settled in the U.S. my work is slowly becoming much more personal in nature.

What is your inspiration?

My inspiration comes from so many diverse corners that it’s almost overwhelming to think about. I’m especially inspired by artists driven by a strong personal vision who are willing and unafraid to follow their creativity where ever it takes them - beyond their own discipline. I admire explorers and experimenters, or more to the point ‘psychonaughts’. David Lynch, Julian Cope, Jean Cocteau and William Burroughs are a few I could immediately name here. I’m inspired by those with a restless energy, the ‘mad ones’ as Kerouac once said – artists with drive and passion. I’m inspired by the journey. Those artists whose lives, whatever they do, are tangled up in the art they make and live it. These, for me are the true artists and my greatest inspiration.

What got you into photography?

Writing was my first love, but photography was always there. I studied photography with a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and I also gained a BA Honors degree in Editorial Photography at Brighton University, passing with a 1st. For me poetry and photography are quite similar in nature. They are both initially about an idea and they are both closely linked to my emotional and psychic life. I used to carry a notebook and pencil around with me everywhere and I scribbled down notes, observations and poems whenever a situation moved me. Now I carry a camera instead. Photography is a much more direct tool, for me, but the thinking behind both is very much the same. The transition from writing to photography was a natural and easy one for me to make.

Digital? film? no preference?

I love the almost sketchbook feeling of making pictures that digital can offer, but I do sometimes miss being in the darkroom, which could be at times a mystical experience. I sometimes find using a computer to process images a drag and the ethereal nature of pixels makes me nervous.

What do you hear at this moment?

Humming air conditioners, screaming Cicadas and the distant din of traffic.

If you could work on a project with any photographer living or dead who would it be and why?

I would have loved to have come to America during the 50’s or 60’s. I find that period in U.S. history and culture fascinating and many of my most beloved and respected cultural heroes, artists and writers come from this era too. Without doubt I would have loved to have shared the driving with Robert Frank while he worked on his Americans series. That book came as a revelation to me and his vision inspires me to this day. To experience and explore pre-interstate America is something I find hard to imagine, especially knowing now the sheer size and scale of this country, having made several long road trips myself. It would have been incredible..

Any news you want to share?

There are a number of on-going projects I am continually working on and I am always having ideas for new works. For several months now I have been back at school studying to be an EMT (emergency medical technician) so photography has sadly taken a bit of a back seat, but now that this course is finished I have just began work on producing a couple of books. One of these will be my Remains to be Seen project, a series of photographs which explores loss, grief, time and memory and what we do with the void left within us after the death of a loved one and how it affects the way we see the world. It is a deeply personal project for me and was a difficult one to make. It will, when completed, contain all 50 photographs from this series plus a handful of personal family snapshots. It will also include some writing from that time also, which I recently re-discovered on some floppy disks and in some old notebooks. These writings I intend to publish in their raw, floored and un-edited state and I will use them to punctuate the photographic sequence to hopefully inform and enrich the images and the book as a whole.

Also couple of months ago I was also lucky enough to get a book deal and I am presently working with a few trusted photographer friends to edit and sequence it. It’s hard work. I do not want to say too much about this right now, but I am very excited about it and I am hoping it is going to be something really special. It will be an edit of my American photographs and titled ‘Resident Alien’. When this project really starts to take some shape I’d love to come back and talk about this with you in more detail.

Pistol & Fur's excellent website and the originally published interview, set with an alternative selection of images, can be found here. Many thanks to Jason Hynes:

http://cargocollective.com/pistolfur/#788188/interviews

Follow these links below to read more interviews:

Interview with Amerikana Magazine with Sam Dickey

http://simonkossoff.blogspot.com/2010/09/resident-alien-photography-of-simon.html

Interview with Head On photo-festival with Lyndal Irons

http://simonkossoff.blogspot.com/2011/03/interview-with-head-on-photo-festival_28.html