Tufts on the Tarmac

Baking in the sun, drowning in the rain, buried for so long under the weight of the abandoned concrete, tufts of life emerge from the cracks, slowly retaking their ground.

Tufts on the Tarmac, Rocky Point

This image was taken on the grounds of an old amusement park. When I first approached this scene, I responded to the sea of graphic concrete slabs crisscrossing in perfectly straight lines running down to the bay. However, there was no focal point, no intimate connection. The experience begged representation; I came back to it time and time again. Finally, I saw the connection was in isolating a piece suggesting the whole. Lying on my belly focusing only two feet in front of me with a very shallow depth of field the emerging life became alive. The image was now not so much about the abandoned slabs of disintegrating concrete as it was in the tufts of life, surviving as a hidden network under a paved world.

Connecting the moment experienced to a photograph often doesn’t happen right away. The graphic remnants of concrete decking surrounding a public pool, first captured my interest. Upon closer contemplation the lines between the slabs, bursting with life, became my metaphor for abandonment and entropy. As for the cement, questions remain. The ghosts steps of barefoot children screaming in delight, are alive in my imagination and linger as vibrations traveling somewhere in the earth.