Forgotten But Not Gone

(with poems by Judith Skillman)

These photographs were taken in and around my home town in central Illinois.  I was moved to collect them and print them in this fashion after reading Robert Fulghum’s essay on visiting his own home territory in Texas:

 “I know.  You think I’m making this all up.  But I’m not.  It’s true.  Most of it.  And no, it’s not heaven on earth.  It’s boring as hell in its own way, and I wouldn’t want to live there a week.  So why do I tell you, anyway?  It’s just this: that there are places we all come from -- deep-rooty-common places -- that make us who we are.  And we disdain them at the risk of self-contempt.  There is a sense in which we need to go home again -- and can go home again.  Not to recover home, no.  But to sanctify memory.”

 Robert Fulghum

“All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten”

Villiard Books, 1988, page 28, used with permission

Dawson’s Drug Store in Eureka, Illinois is gone.  So is the old dog that darted out of the vacant lot next to Susie’s Restaurant and bit my ankle.  The vacant lot is gone, too.  So, in fact, is Susie’s Restaurant.  But those are details.  These photographs are my memories of the Midwest -- corn fields and small towns seven miles apart (seven miles between water tanks when the railroad was built) -- a landscape in which the tallest features are the prairie skyscrapers (grain elevators) and the water towers.

These photographs are my proof that the deep-rooty-common place is still there -- forgotten but not gone.

The complete project contains 25 prints and 25 poems -- CD available

Click to enlarge a photograph.