From Memory
Twenty-something years ago I stumbled across the above sight behind Ludlow, California (on the old Route 66, but that wasn’t why I was there) — another one of my “dead car in the desert” things that I ended up photographing with my view camera (using a view camera in circumstances like this is worth its own article — the constant wind, the blowing sand, the heat-affected film, the curious and sometimes hostile onlookers… the rattlesnakes…).
It looks better printed — this is a not-very-good scan of the original 4x5 transparency — but it’s still kinda canonical for me: the desert, a dead car, a lone pedestrian (if you look carefully), the relentless signs of civilisation against the beauty of the Mojave… the sort of themes I was developing back then, not always consciously.
I didn’t think much about it again for the next twenty+ years until I was back in Ludlow (the same visit that also produced this image). But there it was — that same car, easily recognisable, in the same place; this time I used the D800:
It never occurred to me that it’d still be there, let alone in much the same sort of condition. I really should have expected it, though, especially given the large numbers of dead cars scattered and gathered about the back lots of Ludlow. Junk lasts forever in the desert….
Unfortunately, while trying to get the same image again, I misremembered it badly — I remembered the car being on the right looking inwards rather than on the left looking outwards — which kind of spoils the effect for me (I far prefer the original version, which I hadn’t looked at for a long while). But I still like both images, and so much really hasn’t changed from one to the other.
I’ll try again in ten years, I think. I’m guessing that it will still be there….
