Modern abandonment
Abandoned of buildings or the feeling of a ghost towns can leave a lingering haunting feel.
Driving down an unfamiliar road in an area that is quite new and still developing, that is only a couple minutes away from a more populous area and developed area, this gas station appears at a corner of an intersection. The gas station looks as if it has been out of business and abandoned for quite a while, with how long the strands of grass growing out from the cracks of the concrete and the condition of the small building where people would most likely be going into to pay for gas and buying snacks or lottery tickets. The haunting aspect of this picture is majorly from the abandonment the gas station gives to the viewer, and how this gas station will not be able to be open for business ever again. According to Livingston (2020), images allow us to draw out meaning and make connections to make sense of the world we live in, such as in this photo (figure 5) presents itself how something that is needed can be quickly abandoned. The reason could either due to people are finished using the product or service or there is something better around the corner. Leaving the place untouched and abandoned giving a haunting feeling because the lack of human interaction. (Figure 5) This photo contains a mystery of where and why this was taken, and the longer one stares at the picture, the more questions arise.
Figure 5
This picture (figure 6) captures an empty road, and the emptiness of the road gives off a haunting feeling. The empty road photo (figure 6) portrays an abandoned atmosphere, and a ghost town aura could arise. Even though people have transitioned from physical photos to digital photos, one factor that does not evolve or change is a photograph’s deceptive nature. No matter what one uses to take a picture, deception is unavoidable, one way or another (Shanidze, 2016, p 124). However, the story behind this photo (figure 6) is someone riding in a car, passing by a street, and deciding to take a photo. From this photo (figure 6), the area looks to be an industrial zone, even though it is an area that people are constantly going into and out of the area. However, because it is a specific zone, there is only a specific group of people, which is a low number of people, interacting with this industrial area, thus making the area look like a ghost town at specific points of the day.
Figure 6