David Ottenstein Photography: Architecture, Commercial, Wedding, Bar Mitzvah. New Haven, CT, Connecticut

My photographs, first and foremost, are about beauty. In structures that most people agree are ugly, I see the opposite: surfaces rich in texture and patterns, bold forms molded by light. The grace of carefully crafted brick walls; surfaces which still gleam after decades of disuse; the meandering curves of a corroded machinery joint; diffuse light filtered through years of accumulated dirt and soot on factory windows. The translation of these objective facts into the seductive black and white tones of the photographic process is both the challenge and the excitement of creating these images.

I began my current project of photographing old, neglected buildings in 1998 when a friend arranged access for me into the Hyperion Theatre, a magnificent nineteenth century structure, slated for demolition. I was instantly hooked.

Construction sites had always fascinated me, and I found that this crumbling building offered much of the visual excitement of a construction site plus rich new layers of texture, history, and even mystery and intrigue.

I am curious about how nature invariably encroaches on the manmade, and this subject contained ample documentation of that process. Sunlight bursting through the recently formed “skylights” in the collapsing roof, birds and other animals that had found homes and playgrounds in the building, moss and small plants growing in the piles of damp plaster that had washed from the walls - all reminders of how insignificant the human imprint can be.

As I spent more and more time in a myriad of decaying buildings, I began to hear the intense quiet of these forgotten places. I felt an emptiness, a distant echo of a period in America when these mills and power plants were filled with workers, when floors and walls vibrated from the ceaseless activity of looms, generators, pumps, turbines and boilers; when the theaters and luxurious rail cars bustled with human activity. My photographs evoke the strength and vitality that was once present, yet do so without becoming sentimental and without lamenting a lost era. Rather, the images respect the present state of my subjects and search for meaning and order amidst the abandonment and decay.

I work exclusively with a 4x5 view camera in order to capture clearly the detail and texture of my subjects. My black and white prints, usually 16x20 or larger, are either traditional gelatin silver on fiber paper or digital carbon ink from scans of my 4x5 negatives.

What I describe as the architectural landscape – the places where the built environment meets the natural landscape, or wherever one pursues the other – is changing dramatically in Iowa. New farming methods and technologies coupled with a global marketplace and new economic realities for farmers have made it difficult or impossible for most families to earn a living from the traditional 160 or so acres that has for decades comprised the family farm. Many farmers have sold their land altogether and others have left the state and lease their land to farmers who remain. As fewer entities accumulate larger tracts of land and operate out of a centralized base with larger, more efficient modern machinery, the farmsteads – groupings of traditional farmhouses, barns, silos, corncribs, sheds and other farm buildings – that populated the Iowa landscape are left empty. Structures are disappearing gradually but steadily as vandals and nature take their incessant toll. In some parts of the state, where remote, abandoned barns are popular sites for illegal methamphetamine labs, the barns are quickly being demolished. Traditional grain elevators, in many ways the symbol of heartland America’s bountiful agricultural success, are also falling into disuse as multinational agricultural giants like ConAgra replace small, local facilities with huge, modern regional ones. Likewise, the proliferation of Wal-Marts and similar retail giants has helped to kill many small towns, already stressed by the diminishing farm population that had supported and, in turn, depended on local, family owned stores and shops. In short, the demise of the single-family farm culture has created discernable, physical changes to the architectural landscape. This is the subject of my Iowa photographs.

Prior to my first trip to the Midwest in April 2004, the project on which I had worked regularly since 1998 had encompassed predominantly industrial subject matter in Connecticut, New York and Rhode Island. In this work, I explore issues of beauty amidst decay and the inevitable encroachment of nature back into the built environment. I went to Iowa to do an equivalent exploration of these issues in a rural, agricultural setting. I discovered there, that the traditional structures which symbolize a way of life, foreign to me as a lifelong resident of the metropolitan northeast, yet central to so many of the values that have informed and shaped Americans, are disappearing. They are being replaced by the all-too-familiar architecture of suburbia and modern retailing. My photographs explore, perhaps even celebrate, the inherent beauty in what remains of the architectural landscape we associate with the single-family farm and its way of life.