Hang on Sloopy
“Let’s take decay. Now what is decay? It’s fire. It burns up wood and other things. You never thought of that? Of course not. This sidewalk here and this feed store, the trees down the street there—they’re all on fire. They’re burning up. Decay you see is always going on. It doesn’t stop. Water and paint can’t stop it. If a thing is iron, then what? It rusts, you see. That’s fire, too. The world is on fire.” — Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
Like a lot of photographers, I’m attracted to decay. But rather than take another pretty picture of rust belt architectural ruins, I’m interested in looking at the decay of community life. As more and more people define their social life through digital networks, the physical network of social clubs, churches and volunteer groups withers. I want to see what these community networks look like today.
I recently explored this topic while photographing in Rochester, NY as part of Magnum’s Postcards From America project. For the next week I’m going to continue this investigation with the writer Brad Zellar throughout the state of Ohio.
As with Postcards From America, this trip is an experiment in new ways of making and sharing work. Brad and I are going to post as much as we can along the way. On May 22nd I’ll be talking about our work at Ohio University. And if things go well, we’ll try to quickly publish a newspaper at the end of the trip.
- Alec Soth
This project is sponsored by Magnum’s Looking For America initiative; an ambitious year-long project of interlinking photoessays told by Magnum photographers across a variety of storytelling platforms.
