...and rebirth

September has always been especially kind to me, and no matter how many years out of school I've been, that first day of school butterflies-in-the-stomach thrill of starting afresh always stays with me. This month, now half gone, has been spectacularly mild and beautiful, fully autumn. Goldberg wanted to insure that - since I had an exceptionally crummy summer, where we didn't get to spend much time together or go out shooting - that we made a getaway plan for my birthday. It was decided we would take a trek to the Hudson Valley, near Poughkeepsie, where we would lay our heads at the Hotel Sierra in Fishkill, and spend the majority of our time seeking out the strange and abandoned, and the balance driving around and grazing on some unexpectedly decent food.

6am came much too soon on Saturday morning, September 11th. Away we went making (arguably) the mistake of going north on the east side of the river, by way of the GWB and through neverending Yonkers, Tarrytown and Ossining. Alternately shady and posh in equal measure (but equally unexciting visually) - it wasn't until we cleared Peekskill that we finally started to feel like we were leaving the burbs behind for the wilderness. Despite it looking like the wilderness, it seemed that every backroad we wandered down ended up leading us to a hidden community of swanky houses tucked deep in the woods.

We were starting to lose a little gusto, now 6 hours on the road, we were wondering if we were going to find a reason to hyperventilate and drive off the road from The Thrill of X. Goldberg had a short laundry list of major sites that we considered checking out - psych hospitals, boarding schools etc and by this point in the day, we had made it up to Poughkeepsie proper and wanted to check out Hudson River State Hospital... which was essentially impossible to miss from the main route going through - looming high on a hill, the buildings still seeming sinister on a gorgeous sunny day, surrounded deeply by forest and brush. We drove all around the property, calculating best point of entry, parking, in the meantime spotting some other interesting buildings not part of the hospital property. Perhaps we chose the most obvious point of entry, but I was emboldened and happy to be out of the car, but as I walked just beyond the gate I saw a pickup truck that was semi-concealed by a shrub down the road a hundred feet away... which caused me to walk back out as quickly as I had walked in. There was much hand-wringing and neck-craning but we decided that we'd rather not take the chance that it was an occupied security vehicle. Slightly defeated we went back to the car and drove over to the nearby abandoned Hoe Bowl in Hyde Park. Part of a local chain of bowling alleys - this had the most remarkable exterior of all that we encountered - very 70s, with an enormous bowling pin entrance/doorway.



Creeping into afternoon, we were getting a might peckish and thought checking out Poughkeepsie a bit more thoroughly and finding a bite to eat. The city was surprisingly quaint with a fair amount of restaurant offerings, though we just wanted a quick small bite so as not to ruin our appetites for dinner. We found Soul Dogs - yes, a hot dog cafe - which offered a broad range of unique toppings for beef, chicken and tofu dogs. After a couple tofu dogs with vegan chili and some quinoa salad, we drove around the sidestreets of Poughkeepsie and too a mini walk around a sculpture park that adjoined a derelict magenta pigeon roost-building (so we were told by a man sitting in the park).



We headed up towards Rhinebeck hoping to find one of the long-abandoned mansions built overlooking the Hudson, known as Wyndclyffe, built in 1853. After much circling and doubling back and forth, we found the road that lead back into the woods where she stands, though just barely. There was a fence circling the property which was quite overgrown and the trees and brush were preventing getting a good angle on the façade. It was clear from our vantage point that there was almost nothing left of the interior structure, and now even the exterior which was quite ornate, was sadly collapsing in multiple places. It appeared as though there was barely any roof left towards the center. It was really unfortunate to see such a beautiful building waste away like that. If the current owner is doing anything to preserve or renovate it, it is not apparent in the state it is in.

While we were cruising about looking for Wyndclyffe we passed by a fenced off property with a "For Sale" sign on it, beyond which we could see a couple overgrown 60s-70s style school buildings on the top of a hill. The pickup truck that we were behind at the time (with a four-wheeler in the back) pulled into the gated area and gave *us* the eye as we looked back at them, craning our necks to see the property. Having made a mental note to return post-Wyndclyffe - we made our way back to the gated property. We saw no signs regarding trespassing so we made our way up the hill, sans tripods, towards the visible buildings and out of sight. The first building we came across - Culhane Hall - felt like a dormitory from the 70s - small rooms littered with single bedframes, wardrobe cabinets and a couple larger meeting rooms and stalled bathrooms with showers. It was heavily vandalized and clearly been thoroughly picked over by scrappers, with plenty of asbestos pipe casings scattered around.



Walking out behind Culhane we found ourselves in a courtyard surrounded on all sides by buildings, some of which looked like they had suffered small fires and/or explosions. As we approached the next closest building labeled "Spellman" - with a huge steel cross by the name - we saw a black cat scamper out of the bushes and into the building.






Throughout Spellman, there were huge holes in the brick and cinderblock walls. The rooms here were bigger with boards on the wall as though they were offices and classrooms, with some kitchen, private bathroom and laundry facilities. Goldberg had moved a few rooms ahead of me while shooting at one point, turning a corner ahead so we could no longer see one another. Suddenly I hear, "Laura oh my god come here quick, quick!!"

As I move in the general direction of his voice, I hear groaning shouts and something about "Its trying to get out the window!" and I can make no sense of what I am about to see until I am just about to turn the corner to the room he is in and the black cat comes tearing directly at me in a full gallop, breezing by my leg close enough for me to feel it, kicking up a trail of dust in its terrified wake. Goldberg informs me that the cat was in the room he was in and spooked, then attempted to leave the room by way of the one window on the second floor that still had glass in it - launched itself thusly, bounced, freaked out and left running. Had it not had glass in it, she quite possibly would have leapt to her death. When I saw her earlier, the fact that she ran off was a pretty good sign that she was feral, not rabid. Kitties are much preferred exploration company than raccoons any day, though Goldberg was disturbed by the black cat path-crossing implications.









*note: we did manage to not come to immediate harm during our getaway weekend, though the potential of mesothelioma in our future is still an unknown quantity. we did see black cats at least three times over the course of the weekend.

The next building we approached appeared to have had the most extreme damage, missing what was likely a three-story bank of windows around a central staircase. Not feeling like taking those stairs was the best route, we found a back door into what appeared to be a slightly nicer residence hall, suites possibly for older students or teachers we speculated. There was moss covered carpeting through much of the second floor, bigger windows.



Furthest from the road, we came upon a cluster of large buildings which we surmised was the gymnasium. Immediately upon entering, we were greeted by the rotting wood-floored basketball court with a peeling stage. The scoreboard had a set of initials (CFMA vs. Visitors) and in center circle of the court's floor, just barely visible were the words HOLY CROSS. Goldberg realized that he had seen photographs of this very facility while he was searching online for locations for us to explore, though he couldn't remember the exact function of the place.



The sun was getting low in the sky, we had left our tripods in the rather conspicuously parked car so we decided to cut our losses - which we later found to be another gymnasium and a swimming pool - and head back south towards our hotel, so we could scrub the asbestos out from behind our ears and get our dinner on. On our return southward, we were excited to see a functional drive-in movie theater close to Poughkeepsie. The pitfall was that it was playing two questionable movies, the more appealing of which was a Drew Barrymore romcom. Though we were both exhausted, it would still be quite early when we would be done with dinner, so we both considered - just to enjoy the experience of a drive-in movie, which is a truly rare beast these days (at least in the Philly region) - returning later for some romcom torture.

One shower and a change of clothes later, we made our way back to Poughkeepsie in search of what promised to be a very unfancy pre-birthday dinner of Vietnamese food at the Saigon Cafe. Since I was able to convince Goldberg he needed to give Vietnamese food another chance after a displeasing round several years ago that put him off completely - I have been unable to get him to stop, which for me is great. The look of the place was somewhat questionable, the front window papered with laminated images of menu highlights did put me in mind of seedy Chinese joints in the hood. One look at the menu though and I was swayed to give it an enthusiastic go. Not the multiple pages one might see at our favorite local Vietnamese place, but a good deal of variety and not a hint of non-traditional Ameri-Chinese'd upped dishes. The owners were standing in the small dining room- a husband and wife duo - watching a football game on the tv. As soon as we arrived the wife disappeared immediately into the kitchen and the husband seated us and chatted with us. After we placed our order we took the opportunity to admire the wacky, eclectic "decor" - which included red checked tablecloths, more laminated photos of menu items, huge prints of photographs taken by the owner in Vietnam in the 70s, assorted coffee paraphenalia, and duplicates of every news item where the restaurant had been mentioned such that no matter what direction you were facing in your seat, you could read the same articles.

After spying me put some sriracha sauce on my shrimp spring roll, when he brought out our main dishes he notes that he saw that I like the spicy sauce and offered to give us some of his special chili sauce that he makes himself... which he came over and spooned onto both of our búns. It was all so good, even the fried spring rolls you could tell had just been made up moments before by hand and were super delicious. The only letdown was the lack of desserts available there. Since we had decided to take a miss on the drive-in due to poor movie options, having a look round for something sweet instead. Almost immediately, we drive by a second drive-in theater, this time playing The American which was one of the few movies running either of us had any interest in, only problem was the showtime was almost two hours away. Just around the corner we stumbled upon a mega-kitschy ice cream parlor and we were set. Drawing it out as long as possible, we caved and headed back to the hotel, still amazed that we had managed to find without really even trying all of the things we were hoping for, though we ended up passing on half of it due to our inability to keep our eyes open, especially post-dairy indulgence.

Birthday morning, I was allowed to sleep past 5am all the way to 7am, which felt like sleeping in. After breakfast buffeting and packing we were on our way towards Newburgh on a rather gray morning. Our main goal of the day was to make it to Bannerman's Castle on Pollepel Island before the rain started to fall. But first! We took a driving tour of Newburgh and its quirky suburbs... all of which was reminiscent of North Philly. After a couple hours of cruising around photographing façades looking rather suspicious, including me leaping out of the car at the corner of Shady and Dodgy to photograph some amazing dimensional mid-century metal typography, the group of old guys chatting next door all stopped to stare and then one guy calls out to me, "Hey! Those are some nice boots!" - I thanked him as I ran back to the car.





A small boat took us out to Pollepel Island, we donned out hard hats and half the group scaled the hill towards the front of the castle/armory. Due in part to Francis Bannerman's dubious construction in the first place - he was a man with no architectural or engineering training, preferring to collect details he saw in other buildings, drawn on napkins and hand them over to laborers who were told to 'build me something that looks like this', regardless of how structurally sound it was (or wasn't) – and in part to a very recent collapse over the winter, tours are no longer allowed to get very close to the building for fear of further collapse. There are really only two walls left to the main portion of the armory building.





We worked our way inland a bit toward the equally decaying concrete and brick summer residence (which I didn't know existed). The Bannerman Trust had planted the gardens around the house which were in full bloom. Though you couldn't go inside – what was left of the structure – you could still walk right up to it. Though it was tempting, the decorative brick frills overhead looked quite unstable. Off to one side there was a two-story concrete "sleeping porch" where the family apparently hung hammocks and the breezes blew through the windowless open sides, providing an escape from the worst of the heat.





Further down the hill there were some gardens where Lady Bannerman grew flowers and vegetables. By the time we had finished making our way back up the hill after the tour was finished the rain started up and was coming right down by the time we were boarding the boat back.

Deciding it wasn't quite nice enough to pay a visit to Storm King, we headed out of Newburgh hoping to find some interesting abandoned sites I had made a rather extensive list of before we came up. Sating our hunger at the surprisingly good Bukhara Bistro, we headed for one of many tiny nearby towns where we would discover quite a few of these locations - several were too conspicuous, others demolished and a surprising number were actually inhabited and/or being restored.

While searching for one of these locations, we found ourselves in the village of Kiryas Joel. I thought it a curious name for a town but I didn't really do too much digging beyond the streets we might find something of interest. The moment we passed a sign noting we had entered the village it was as though we had suddenly been thrust deep into the Old Country... or maybe Brooklyn. The streets were teeming with Hasidic Jews, not just the sidewalks - there were so few cars and so many people they were overflowing into the streets, with tons of children running around. In such an incredibly remote area, having been through very rural communities where we had barely seen anyone at all, the extreme density of people was quite a jolt. I did some more reading and found that the town is privately owned town controlled by the Hasidim - it has the highest poverty rate in the nation, with the population size doubling approximately every ten years. It seems there is quite a bit of controversy surrounding the village and it relations with its neighbors.

The day came to an anti-climatic end, driving through NJ in the rain all the way home, but it opened the door to an area I imagine I will be returning to in the near future for further exploration. I made this construct almost entirely out of buildings I found in Newburgh... enjoy

living and dying

Finally, we have come to the end of a summer of extremes, the bulk of which was marred by extreme heat, extremely poor business, extreme sadness followed by restorative extreme elation plus a glut of work and hope. Now I am doing my best to make up for the months spent indoors with the curtains drawn against the fierce summer sun. I went from working not at all to working 6-7 days a week, just trying to overcompensate. One of the most painful parts of the summer was actually not the deficit of paying jobs, but the lack of personal work.


while there is still breath in my lungs © Laura Kicey

Just when I thought I had reached the bottom, I was walking home from the first day of work I'd had in a very long time and I came across a Luna Moth, just barely alive, sitting on the sidewalk. It is most unusual to come across them ever, as they live only a week and generally only come out at night. Though I generally don't put much stock in signs per se, this felt like something of an omen. Something special found me. I was catsitting for my boss at the time, so after taking this photography, I took this beauty - in its final hours of life - to their garden, out of harm's way. The next day I returned, hoping to find her gone, but she had died overnight in the very spot I had left her.

Within days, things started picking up speed with work, such that I barely had time to draw breath. I was hungering for a bit exploration. I was called upon by the lovely proprietress of Peg&Awl/BlackSpotBooks, Margaux, wondering if I knew of a good location with some specific features for a shoot she had in mind. I ended up sending her and her husband Walter over to Peru House... and without going into detail, they ran into some problems and had to leave without ever getting inside.


branching in © Laura Kicey


merriweather © Laura Kicey


view with a room © Laura Kicey


bric-a-brac © Laura Kicey


falling down the stairs © Laura Kicey


window dressing © Laura Kicey


pokeweed © Laura Kicey

I attempted to think of another appropriate location but Margaux was already headed for one of her old faithful spots, a farmhouse near Schwenksville that she had visited many times but hadn't been in a few years. She kindly invited me to meet them there. Despite the monsoons sweeping through repeatedly, I ventured out. It is peculiar to meet with people who you haven't seen in years, in an abandoned house in the rain, one hugely pregnant, both painting each others' faces. But it was quite a lovely place, especially the windowless porches.


grandmagiggle © Laura Kicey

Only a couple days after this, I got a phone call from my mother. My grandmother was having trouble breathing, she was turning blue and had to be admitted to the hospital. It turned out that she had had a heart attack, her second, and she had a lot of fluid in her lungs. The doctor told her that she had a lot of fluid in her lungs but that she was too weak for any surgery and she was in congestive heart failure. They would keep her comfortable and keep her on oxygen. It looked for a couple of days like they might send her home to the apartment she lived in at a retirement community, but she took a turn for the worse and instead they started discussing hospice or assisted living facilities. It had been a few months since I'd seen my grandma, I think the last time was around Christmas and I wanted to be there for her, should this be the end. Ever since I spent so much time in the hospital, I know how important it is to have company while you are in the hospital. I also wanted to photograph her hands. The women in my family all have such lovely hands and I hadn't photographed hers ever.

When I got to the hospital in Lancaster, my aunt, uncle and one cousin who I hadn't seen in perhaps 15 years were all there, along with my mom. My mom had brought her iTouch loaded with my grandma's favorite dance tunes from the 30s and 40s and she laid in bed with the earbuds in, singing along, "dancing" in bed, and conducting. Though she hadn't had pain meds since the early morning, she was on a very high concentration of oxygen, which made her very euphoric and at times, quite hilarious. Even if she wasn't terribly lucid the whole time, she was still able to recognize us sometimes when she opened her eyes. She would break into a coughing fit every so often, followed with a pause to collect herself, then "oh my!" then, "meedle ba-deedle!". My mom said that she had never said this before two days ago, but we all joked that it was the password. When we asked her what it meant she said she didn't know, but it quickly became our catchphrase for what turned out to be an almost fun last day of her life. I was glad that I got to sit with her, hold her hand, joke with her and see her off. It wasn't easy to watch my last and favorite grandparent dying, struggling to draw breaths. Toward the evening, she was struggling to breath more and more and before we left for the night we asked the nurse to give her some morphine so she wouldn't struggle so much with breathing, so she might get some sleep.


after the ball © Laura Kicey

The next morning my mom woke me early to say she had gotten a call from the hospital to say that grandma was going downhill fast and my parents were both going to go in right away. I wasn't allowed to come, my mom didn't want me to see her like this. Before they got to leave the house, another phone call came to say that she had already passed away.

At her 91st birthday back in June, my grandma told my mom that she was ready to die. She just wanted to go quickly and without suffering. It was something of a relief that she did not suffer long. She held out long enough for us all to come and have a "going away party" for her, filled with laughter and music, and when we left, she let go. I wish she hadn't died alone, but I do not regret getting to see her off when I did. She died on her terms.


soul light © Laura Kicey

The day after her funeral service my friend Daniel invited Goldberg and myself to shoot in an old North Philadelphia factory space that is currently abandoned but is slated to become condos in the near-ish future. Unable to say no to a good (and much-needed) airing out, we met with Daniel and his lively pit bull Lupita, who we brought to ward off potential squatters for a little private tour.


soup and salad © Laura Kicey


linen © Laura Kicey


white christmas © Laura Kicey


the lilac throne © Laura Kicey


greenheart © Laura Kicey


sledding © Laura Kicey

I for one, was a bit jumpy at the prospect of running into squatters in the former fabric mill. There was evidence all over that people had been living there, and not long after we got there, we ran into a small group of the contractors who confirmed that a group of squatters had been doing drugs and having sex on the roof and he started firing his gun to scare them off.


spatter © Laura Kicey


lupita and the little blue room © Laura Kicey


release, reduce, repent © Laura Kicey

It is times like these that make me wish I had an army of pit bulls. Lupita is good to have on your side, but she is a total cupcake.



the office © Laura Kicey


receptacle © Laura Kicey


enteral © Laura Kicey


sleepless © Laura Kicey

The remainder of the day was spent driving around West Philly, collecting pieces for a construct. It had been ages since I made one and one might be able to determine how deeply in withdrawal I was by the sheer size of this one.


inheriting the earth © Laura Kicey

To see out the worst summer ever, Goldberg and I decided that we should have a Going Everywhere Weekend Spectacular for Labor Day weekend, since we had no other engagements. Saturday we did Everything, Sunday we went Everywhere. Saturday was a bit more successful, we started off once more pointed towards Schwenksville, when we came across a sign for Ott's. I had heard of Ott's years ago - described as a whimsical gardening center/nursery. I thought Terrain had cornered the local market on whimsical gardening, but I was wrong. It was a bit of a tough sell to get Goldberg to go to a gardening store, but once we pulled up to the store we were both taken aback. First, I was struck by the giant mothership-like Victorian onion-dome-shaped greenhouse, surrounded thickly by dense, tall, flowering plants - canna and bougainvillea, all sorts of vines. Instead of going in the front door, we peeked around the side and again, I was stopped dead in my tracks by a very tall manmade mountain covered with a perfect grid of pre-bloom chrysanthemums, topped with three tall slender topiaries.


thrice © Laura Kicey


unrooted © Laura Kicey

And there was a twisty tunnel going through the base of it all. Which ejected you on the other side, a sort of end of the nursery wasteland, which was surrounded with some nearly-abandoned looking greenhouses and outbuildings. Once we made our way inside, it felt as though we had wandered into some crazy botanist's secret backroom of experiments gone awry... and like we weren't really supposed to be there. But yet it was not off limits. The specimen plants they had there were very mature, and the central greenhouse was verging on full scale jungle. I was bracing for howler monkeys and pythons. It was not overly designed, there was not a lot of ornamental *stuff* around, and most of the plants were actually not for sale, so it was more like going to a proper garden. Much more a pure fantastic plant enjoying experience than a shopping/material stuff. It was refreshing to see plants taking over the walkways, poking through windows, dead leaves, new buds...not arranged.


reflector © Laura Kicey


musculature © Laura Kicey


palm to palm © Laura Kicey

It also lent itself to a great deal of handy leaf fondling.


toothsome © Laura Kicey

We took a turn toward Birdsboro and happened upon a railcar graveyard off a windy country road. There were all sorts of signs, a variety of engines, cabooses and cars, a trolley, old steamrollers, small buildings, tractors, all under the intense sun.


train depot © Laura Kicey


next stop © Laura Kicey

Goldberg and I have a very specific dynamic when approaching an abandoned house that we are considering entering. While neither of us throws caution to the wind entirely, our assessments are generally made very quickly - in a less than 10 minute window, usually less, based on 1-3 drivebys, deciding if it is truly abandoned, if there is an access point and if it is possible too conspicuous. More often than not Goldberg will be the one charging ahead and not questioning, I will be the one who will more than likely call something too risky to try. What can I say, I'm very particular! If I am going to get arrested, it damn well better be worth it or positioned in such a way that I can talk myself out of a situation.


putting out fires © Laura Kicey

This house brought out something quite different in us both. Very secluded country road with little traffic, I see the farmhouse with a fence all the way around the property, but there was a little enclosed porch overgrown with ivy, the door open and flapping in the breeze. I could see barn-like buildings behind it, immediately I got a good vibe, we turned around and did a slow driveby and pulled into the driveway. We checked out the main gate which was wrapped in chains, the fence than went all the way around the property had a barbed wire top.


the heated heart © Laura Kicey


roast © Laura Kicey


I walked the road to see if I could find an end to it and we came upon a small gate. Which conveniently was open. When there were no cars in sight we opened the gate and made our way toward the open door. It brought us into a small cellar-like room which lead in two directions towards very dark rooms. Feeling slightly defeated, sans flashlights and tripods, we decided to check the main door all the way around the back and on the other side. We waited until we heard no cars, and started moving around the side of the house, Goldberg in front of me. We had moved pretty much out of street visibility behind some shrubs and trees and suddenly, Goldberg hears a car and starts to panic that he is visible and takes off running. Immediately he face plants having tripped over a rock. What is remarkable about this display is that it is not the first time one of us heard traffic and taken off running at an abandoned house, but the last time it happened, it was me. And I destroyed my knee after getting caught in a thick patch of tall grass.... and fell into the door of the house in question. This was the first time I was the one who was certain we were in the clear, and Goldberg breaks into a run to avoid being seen by traffic and wiped out.


the icebox © Laura Kicey

When we checked the main door it was locked. There was another porch on the back side, but Goldberg was feeling a bit shaken and though we were able to walk right in the porch door, I knew we weren't going to spend a lot of time in here. The room we entered had a big old woodburning stove, curtains in the windows, a rotary phone on a shelf and a rather fancy double-sided display case with arched French doors built into the buttery yellow walls. Even though the porch was overgrown with ivy, the house was unusual in that it did not have the distinctive musty odor that most abandoned places possess. It was barely even dirty, though the house was quite old. Every room had a woodburning stove, there were two fireplaces with massive, primitive mantels. The appliances in the kitchen were not terribly old and the wood floors beneath our feet were in fantastic shape - the only signs of decay was a bit of sagging ceiling where the plaster had started to fall. Goldberg chose to not venture up the incredibly narrow spiraling staircase that led up from the kitchen. While I was hopeful, I declined to go upstairs as well as I don't like to be the *only* person going anywhere in an abandoned location.


the ring © Laura Kicey

We briefly investigated the barn in the back and decided that we should probably take our leave before we incurred further damages. Though that was not the end of the day's adventures, it was the last of the visuals worth sharing.

.........................

A couple of exciting bits of news - a few weeks ago I was contacted by a production company doing the graphics for new miniseries that will be premiering on AMC on Halloween called The Walking Dead. They wished to buy the rights to an images I shot in an abandoned house a few years back to use in the opening title sequence amongst a series of images of decaying places. Though I don't know much about the plot of the show, I do know that it is about Zombies. Who doesn't like Zombies? Moreover, who doesn't like being on AMC?! You can read more about it here.

And just today I found out that the shoot I did in APRIL (?!?!) has been published in Iconography Magazine's Fall 2010 Pride Issue

models Laura Sioux Kirkpatrick and Jennifer An finalists from ANTM Cycle 13
wardrobe by Stacey Appel
hair and Jenn's makeup by April Ramirez
Laura Sioux's makeup by Sasha Zavadsky
photo assisting by Danika Smith
Photography © Laura Kicey

The three spreads begin on page 100 (even though it says 96 in the TOC), plus you can see me on the contributors page. Here are some shots (including some that didn't make the spread):