Customer Reviews

Lost America: The Abandoned Roadside West

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

As you would expected the mechanical detritus of America is a bit of a magnet for photographers. Who can pass up taking shots of abandoned vehicles, filling stations and other commercial buildings that seem to be scattered along the tarmac of the Nation, especially if they are surrounded by an empty landscape. Not Troy Paiva for sure but he takes the idea a step further by capturing all this stuff after dark and he does a super job.

Not content with taking these photos at night he adds a neat touch by using different colored lights to illuminate the scene. So now the ordinary abandoned filling station becomes the extraordinary abandoned station with red walls, green and purple canopies against a dark blue sky (Ludlow on Route 66, page forty-seven) or part of a pick-up truck with a magenta cab leaning against a junked interstate highway sign (Sacramento, page 110) The four chapters in the book are full of these intriguing photos. The best ones, I think, are in Salvage where you can see some knockout images of old jet planes, slowly being cut up for scrap.

As well as great photos, Troy Paiva writes interesting captions to all the photos, rather unusual for a photo book, so many photographers seem to think that just the name of the location and the year is all that is required. He also contributes four worthwhile essays to each chapter filling out the historical detail of what is now discarded.

So why *** stars? It's because the book's production really does not do justice to these photos. The publisher mostly produce transport books not art books and the layout would be fine if it was dealing with trains, for instance, where the photos and artwork would come from a variety of sources. I feel `Lost America' deserves a more formal treatment, with each page having one centered image and caption and the text not mixed up with the photos. Also there is far too much white space, none of the photos are whole page or on black pages for a change of pace. If Paiva carries on taking his night shots perhaps another publisher will produce a book that shows of his work to better effect.

BTW: You can see all these photos (on a handsome black screen) and more on Troy's website, just put his name into Google. Here's a bit of advice though, don't click on his LINKS unless you have a few hours to spare, it is the most awesome list of visual Americana sites you'll find anywhere. All free too!

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.

A beautiful but sad look at abandoned and forgotten scenes in America. The lighting and the timing of the photographs makes this a very unique and delightful book. Clearly a lot of thought went into capturing these images. It's a sad commentary, in some ways, of human nature. When we tire of something, we just toss it by the wayside in favor of something new.

Troy Paiva has been photographing abandoned buildings for over ten years. But unlike David Plowden, who favors the industrial rust-belt buildings under overcast skies, Paiva centers on the small, roadside buildings of Southern California, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico; the mom-and-pop grocery stores, gas stations, and drive-in theaters that have been left in the desert to decay a slow, dry death. Although this book is interesting to anyone who's a fan of either Route 66 memorabilia or the history of roadside America, the most stunning aspect of this book is that all of the photographs were taken at night, usually under a full moon with the aid of well-placed color strobes. And while a Hollywood production company would flood these buildings with enough light to make it look like daytime, Troy Paiva selectively adds just enough colored light to draw the buildings out of the darkness and render some sense of mystery to the scenes.

I'd highly recommend this book to anyone who's interested in abandonded buildings, roadside America and night photography.

Speaking as a published photographer, this book of unusual night photography is very, very impressive, and highly recommended. On first look, this appears to be portfolio of artsy night photographs of rusty junk that's been abandoned in the desert and photographed by a roving lost soul. But it's much more than that. It's a diary of Lost America, and an ode to the innovation and creativity of The American Spirit.

Paiva will take you on a strange journey that he's been traveling for more than 10 years, through the graveyards of a world that no longer exists, except in our memories, and in these photographs, which are unlike anything you've ever seen. Yes, these are photographs of long-abandoned leading-edge technological innovations of their time - which we now call junk -- but they are also pictures of places, long ago abandoned by people who had bigger hopes and dreams. What we don't know is whether their dreams ended in tragedy, or whether they abandoned what they saw as worthless baubles of an industrial America in constant state of creative destruction and transition, to move onward and upward to better things. And thus these photographs become palettes for our imaginations.

Behind every picture, there is a story, and Paiva's five outstanding essays provide some of that story by providing insight to the transitions of American culture over the past 50 years or so, as well as adding his uniquely humorous, sentimental - and sometimes scary - outlook on his photo subjects.

He also weaves enough autobiographical information into his poetic prose to provide us with glimpses into the soul of a man who enjoys taking 3,000 mile road trips in four days under a full moon, and barreling down Interstate highways with the stereo pounding, while sleepy, punchy, and covered with sweat and desert grit. My favorite is this: "Salvage yards are some of my favorite places to haunt. You get the feeling that these objects are all staring at you, imploring you to put them out of their misery. If machines have souls, then junkyards are filled with their ghosts, confused and trapped in the purgatory between useful life and their ultimate demise in the smelter."

After reading the essays and viewing the pictures, Paiva's success in capturing his vision of Lost America may change the way you view the world of junk, forevermore.

The 100 plus color pictures, all shot on 35mm film and presented without digital or darkroom enhancements, are each captioned with flair and personality. For example, when was the last time you saw the work "gimpy" in print, as in : "A gimpy starburst light fixture rises above the other battered and faded signs in the blistering desert sun of Las Vegas' sign graveyard" (p.101).

In addition to the photos and essays and personal observations and biography, there is an Introduction by Stan Ridgway, former Wall of Voodoo performing who's recent CD Holiday In Dirt is adorned with a Paiva-shot photo. He captures the essence of Paiva's photo essays magnificently in just a few words: "Can a person be compassionate about a broken-down, abandoned motel or a rotting, rusty trailer? Meet Troy Paiva.... And if every picture tells a story, then Troy is a master storyteller. But he's also an explorer.... Some kind of archaeologist or desert astronaut, uncovering an ancient civilization - our own."

Not only has Paiva captured the junk heap at the side of the road that is America's journey of progress, but throughout his work he has also succeeded in tugging at the heartstrings of each of us who are now travelers on a similar journey, knowing that one day our worn-out consumer goods will be tokens of our worn-out, discarded, or lost dreams - and our own personal contribution to someone else's Lost America.

Now in its second print-run, Troy Paiva's LOST AMERICA is the equivalent of a medieval "Ubi sunt?" poem, with abandoned drive-ins and car shells standing in for the Roman temples and aqueducts. His striking, beautifully lit night-shots are more than nostalgia or kitschy tributes; they're documents of an American culture that sheds identities and icons with unsettling ease. As others have noted, Paiva's as good a writer as he is a photo-artist, and so the accompanying essays are just as evocative as the images. The only things LOST AMERICA lacks are a sturdier hardcover edition and a follow-up.

I have been a fan of lostamerica.com for a long time. The night photography is just incredible! What took me by suprise in "Lost America: The Abandoned Roadside West" is the wonderful, descriptive, passages that author Troy Paiva has included describing his 100 mph journeys thru the Lost America. Not only is Paviva an expert photographer, (these photos are beyond description, you must see them) he is an artist with his words. You almost can feel the desert heat, the sand filled wind against your face...Just a wonderful reading experience. I hope a part II is in the works!

Troy Paiva uses an interesting compositional approach that really brings out a genuine metaphysical aspect of any setting. It is this kind of photography that causes one to stop and think about our recent past, and where we are heading in the future. There is a lot to be said about the modern American iconography one sees in every shot. It's beautiful. It's spiritual. It makes a person take introspection.

Here's an amazing accomplishment, an artistic method that's new & unique & innovative yet [isn't bad], along with several thousand words showing that the guy can shoot AND write. Who'd've thunk it? Well, maybe me, since I've seen evidence of both for awhile, but so what: the insides of this book jump off the page at you. You show me anything that entertains me even a fraction of what this here book's been doing for me lately & I'll buy you a zima. I trust you realize neither of those are gonna happen. This author is one of those people who finds fascination in decay, and he's found a way to channel that fascination & bring it to yr coffee table. And what's great here is that it's hard to say whether it's his technique, his subjects, or his words that are most striking. Can you imagine a more interesting road trip with anyone else? I just wish he could lug his gear out east to a place called Coney Island one of these days.