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Title: Lost America: The Abandoned Roadside West by Troy Paiva, Stan Ridgway ISBN: 0-7603-1490-X Publisher: Motorbooks International Pub. Date: June, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.8 (10 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Lost America Rules!!
Comment: I've been a fan of Troy Paiva's night photography for years. It's ethereal, it's mysterious, it's almost supernatural. The Abandoned Roadside West is his recurrent theme: ghost towns, derelict drive-ins and motels, airplane graveyards, and other places in our own country that we would never otherwise see, or even guess at their existence.
How does he do it? He works at it. Over the years he developed his own system of long-exposure night photography that uses strategically placed colored strobes to light the most unusual and out-of-the-way locales imaginable, which he researches and tracks down during week-long expeditions through the forgotten desert highways of the West in his trusty Subaru SUV.
Paiva, a former toy designer, is like no one else. He possesses a sardonic view of the world and a maniacal sense of humor. His esthetic is informed by kitsch, camp, television, toys, modern architecture, the pop culture of the fifties and sixties, and his extensive formal training in design and technology. How this mixture of traits and influences yields such hauntingly beautiful images is a mystery you will want to check out.
Rating: 5
Summary: This is an Adventure!
Comment: I have watched this book take shape over the past several years, slowly gathering momentum as more and more people began to appreciate Troy's vision. But even having seen the photographs and having read the drafts of the manuscript did not prepare me for how stunning the completed work looks and feels.
Troy drives down the deserted byways of the West to show us a world that many of us once knew intimately before freeways and technology bypassed it. This is an America, often less than fifty years old, that is disappearing before our eyes. Troy reminds us that it is not just the drive-in theaters and restaurants, not just the gas stations and motels that we have abandoned, but a whole way of life as well.
Lost America is more than a collection of striking photographs and engaging narrative. It is an adventure. Troy grabs you by the hand and drags you out to stand under the vast canopy of the desert sky to experience this world as it is today, even as whispers from yesterday linger in the air.
This book appeals to our feelings, not our intellect. Each reader is welcome to bring the richness of his or her own life to enhance the experience of Lost America.
Although Troy has acknowledged the contributions of the people who have helped shape Lost America, I would like to add a footnote.
Troy's mother, Kali, was on the spiritual path before Troy was born. Troy grew up in a home filled with spiritual masters, seekers, and the most wonderful energy. He may not always have appreciated it, but a child could not have asked for more. Kali has always encouraged Troy to follow his heart, to give life to his dreams, to trust creativity and allow it to go where it will.
And the creativity that touches everything that Troy does fills this book to the overflowing.
Rating: 5
Summary: Haunting, Riveting Images of Abandoned Popular Culture.
Comment: After years of admiring Troy Paiva's photography on his website, I was thrilled to find that a collection of his unique images is finally available in print. For those unfamiliar with Paiva's work, he takes color pictures of long-abandoned buildings and machines at night, under moonlight, and provides additional illumination with splashes of brightly colored flash. If that sounds gaudy or just plain odd, it probably is. And although I'm normally a fan of subdued colors and black-and-white photography, Troy Paiva's work has always captivated me. A lot of photographers take pictures of decay. And taken under sunlight by any other photographer, that's what these images would look like. But decay is only part of the story. Troy Paiva had a stroke of genius when he determined that darkness and garish color would turn his images of junk into vital accounts of American technologies and ideas whose life cycle has been spent. His lighting techniques make the structures seem haunted. Not by ghosts, but by cultures long departed. Ugly things are made eerily riveting, if not actually beautiful.
"Lost America" contains five sections: "Where the Lanes Are Wide" (photographs of abandoned Miracle Mile towns), "Drive In, Drive Out" (you guessed it, drive-in movie theaters), "The Last Resort" (The Salton Sea), and "Salvage" (machines with one foot in the grave). Troy Paiva introduces each section with an excellent essay detailing the history of the subject and its demise. The essays are fluid and informative. Mr. Paiva turns out to be one of those photographers who writes the text for his photographs better than anyone else could. There are about 90 5"x7 1/2" color photographs in this book, all with explanatory captions, and some smaller black-and-white photographs as well. I have really enjoyed looking at these images over and over again. My only misgiving about the book is that I wish it were hardcover and perhaps a little larger. Nevertheless, no fan or practitioner of photography should be without Troy Paiva's haunting historic images. Aficionados of 20th Century popular culture may also find "Lost America" valuable for its graphic representation of how cultures and their icons came and then passed into oblivion. Highly recommended.
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Title: Ghost Towns of the American West by Berthold Steinhilber, Mario Kaiser, Michael Koetzle, Wim Wenders ISBN: 0810945088 Publisher: Harry N Abrams Pub. Date: 01 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Abandoned America by Steve Gottlieb, Steven Gottlieb ISBN: 1585361054 Publisher: Sleeping Bear Press Pub. Date: December, 2002 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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Title: Readymades: American Roadside Artifacts by Jeff Brouws ISBN: 0811836770 Publisher: Chronicle Books Pub. Date: April, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: American Signs: Form and Meaning on Route 66 by Lisa Mahar, Lisa Mahar-Keplinger ISBN: 1580931197 Publisher: The Monacelli Press Pub. Date: February, 2003 List Price(USD): $40.00 |
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Title: Gone: Photographs of Abandonment on the High Plains by Steve Fitch ISBN: 0826329616 Publisher: University of New Mexico Press Pub. Date: January, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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