My Recent Work on Time.com w/Help From the LFF

[bulrich]

Gang,
I discovered the LFF forum a few years back and have found it to be a wonderful and generous resource for the photographic community. Reaffirms what I feel the Internet can provide beyond the classroom, etc..
The LFF has been esp. helpful in working with 8x10 and getting suggestions on techniques, equipment etc...
Wanted to share some of the 8x10 work I've been doing since last Spring. A project called Dark Stores, Ghostboxes and Dead Malls.
Time Magazine (http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1884100,00.html) has posted an online essay of this work. Most of pictures were done with an Ebony RW810 and recently a Chamonix 810. Shooting either Kodak 400 or Fuji S (and even a few sheets of Fuji NPL I had stashed). Lenses were a 240mm Apo Symmar and a 300mm Symmar S.
I'll be adding a lot more to my website very soon but did want to share and say thanks to the community here for all your help.
Best,
-Brian Ulrich

[Ben Syverson]

Brian, your work is phenomenal. Congratulations!

[Frank Petronio]

Great stuff, especially the "Over 100 Years" -- it is good to see you break from the far away cold shots and move in.

How did the weeds grow inside?

[Steve M Hostetter]

Incredible

[Kirk Gittings]

Very timely project. Very haunting and lonely, well done.

[Ash]

cool

[Dave Aharonian]

Really nice work Brian!

[bulrich]

Many thanks all!

[Preston]

Beautiful and poignant work, Brian. Kudos to you!

-Preston

[Henry Ambrose]

Excellent!

[jb7]

They're great pictures, well done-
A bit different to the pictures of the last great depression,
but just as alarming in their own way...


joseph

[jnantz]

good stuff!

[David A. Goldfarb]

Excellent work. I grew up in Cleveland, and I remember Randall Park Mall as being the largest shopping mall in the area back in the 80s. I had no idea it had closed. My parents had a jewelry store in Beachwood Place mall, and I developed a lifelong allergy to shopping malls.

How did you get access to light these places?

[aphexafx]

I am endlessly fascinated with Malls, American mega-trends, ghost stores, and suburban mall-centrism. So, this is just a fantastic work. I will certainly share it with my mates who have the same strange passion! Thanks for sharing!

Denver has a large collection of dead-malls, but Cinderella City as a phenomenon, an era, and a source of fascination in its after life for all of us. Now it is gone, and the City of Englewood sits in its place. But we will always remember...

Facinating...

[Scott Knowles]

Thanks. The photos are great. It's always my view that photographs that last the longest (over time) are ordinary scenes of the times, simply picture of the everyday life around us. It's always the lasting legacy we can give the future about who we are.

[bulrich]

This is just a small edit of the project which is ongoing. David, Randall Park is actually still 'open'. The Sears was up and running as was the Burlington Coat Factory and perhaps the movie theater. I took that picture around Thanksgiving last year and it was getting very quiet. The interiors are just available light. When it's real dark outside I might paint over the long exposures w/flashlights or a Unity light (police style lamp).
Matt, hope to make it Denver to do some photographing soon. Always been in love with the work of Robert Adams from there.

[Robert Brummitt]

Really interesting work. Minds me of the work done during the Great Depression and work of European store fronts damaged after the war.
I understand there are whole small town "main streets" that are abandon as well. I hope someone is out there photographing. It would be great to gather these into a show one day.
Keep exploring.

[Blair Ware]

haunting work, so familiar and unexpected

[QT Luong]

Congratulations also for the Robert Koch Gallery show.

[Greg Blank]

It's excellent work Brian.

& One of my chief concerns,I have been troubled by the sprawl we see here in Maryland. Maryland was once a beautiful state, because of its location related to Washington I fear my native State will someday be nothing but concrete.

Part of our problem in this country is allowing unrestrained building. Everyone flees the Metro areas and they become somewhere else. It would be nice if our economy was based on maximizing potential instead of squandering it by always building more retail space and Mc Mansions.



Gang,
I discovered the LFF forum a few years back and have found it to be a wonderful and generous resource for the photographic community. Reaffirms what I feel the Internet can provide beyond the classroom, etc..
The LFF has been esp. helpful in working with 8x10 and getting suggestions on techniques, equipment etc...
Wanted to share some of the 8x10 work I've been doing since last Spring. A project called Dark Stores, Ghostboxes and Dead Malls.
Time Magazine (http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1884100,00.html) has posted an online essay of this work. Most of pictures were done with an Ebony RW810 and recently a Chamonix 810. Shooting either Kodak 400 or Fuji S (and even a few sheets of Fuji NPL I had stashed). Lenses were a 240mm Apo Symmar and a 300mm Symmar S.
I'll be adding a lot more to my website very soon but did want to share and say thanks to the community here for all your help.
Best,
-Brian Ulrich

[shmoo]

beautiful and devastating at the same time...great work!

[bulrich]

Greg,
Great to hear your experience in MD. The sprawl issue is now a much bigger problem than we ever expected. Local and State govt went for the cash and were happy to sell land for commercial developers left and right. The promises of tax revenues and jobs were all it took for them to agree without any conditions.
Hopefully more people will get active and demand limits on the amount of retail space can be developed. Some communities are insisting that if a developer or retailer builds that they set aside a fund to clean up the site if it fails.

[Greg Blank]

Brian;

I grew up in a rural patch of land between developments, I could at one point walk all day in any direction and not see another person. By the time I got through college only my grandparents 16 acre farm was left of that expanse. In 1929 My grandparents bought that 16 acres for 5,000 dollars. Had they had an additional
5,00 could have bought the two 100 acre farms adjacent to their land.

Later when my grand mother could no longer take care of herself and live on her own the farm was sold. The developers put 86 houses on 16 acres and I saw my grandmothers house burned down in a "fire training exercise".

Land use is a sore subject for me.

Thank you for responding.



Greg,
Great to hear your experience in MD. The sprawl issue is now a much bigger problem than we ever expected. Local and State govt went for the cash and were happy to sell land for commercial developers left and right. The promises of tax revenues and jobs were all it took for them to agree without any conditions.
Hopefully more people will get active and demand limits on the amount of retail space can be developed. Some communities are insisting that if a developer or retailer builds that they set aside a fund to clean up the site if it fails.

[bulrich]

Greg, Very moving story. Certainly brings to mind many pictures.

And all they say is we only talk f-stops around here ;)

[mccormickstudio]

Brian - you know I like 'em. Congrats on the Time slideshow. Keep us posted on when they'll be in galleries/museums. Can't wait to see them all large.

[thechrisproject]

I don't know if Brian's planning on announcing this, but I thought I'd add it in: Mr. Ulrich has been named a 2009 Guggenheim Fellow. Hot damn!

http://www.gf.org/news-events/List-of-2009-Fellows-United-States-and-Canada/