Why I Created a Midcentury American Town

For seven years, I’ve slowly conjured the town of Elgin Park. Here’s the hows, whys and wheres.

People frequently ask why I created the town of Elgin Park; that imaginary place found only in photographs and on the Internet, with more than 85 million visitors since it’s materialization back in 2008.

The answer is slightly different each time I respond because in many ways the place is a state of mind, built upon childhood memories, half remembered stories heard over 50-years ago plus, fantasies dreamed up on sweltering summer days and gray Pittsburgh winters.

Elgin Park is a combination of models and “forced perspective.

It’s a place that physically exists due to both physical labor and technology. The digital camera, the computer and the software that mimics old photographic films and processes enables the town to be seen. Then there is the physical work necessary to construct the buildings, along with the forced perspective technique used when photographing the scenes.

No Photoshop is used. This is a project planted firmly in the Old School ways of doing things.

There are no fancy machines or well equipped shops in which the models are constructed. Everything is hand made utilizing only the most basic tools: an X-acto knife, a small set of hand held drill bits, sanding blocks, rulers and squares. The kitchen table is the stand-in for the work bench. Preliminary sketches are scribbled in ink on scraps of paper, followed by full size 1/24th scale drawings in pencil, on graph paper.

Being a Luddite — a person opposed to new ideas and technology — is not my intent. I’ve found there is a quiet joy in thinking with a pencil or ink pen. Feeling the slight drag of the writing instrument across the paper, as the ideas pass from my brain, down my through fingers to the pen, then jump onto the page, is a subtle wonder to behold. It is where imagination and reality meet.

“Our imaginations want to materialize into this world. Visiting Elgin Park could be seen as the first stop on the inspiration highway.”

The same simple approach applies to the building of the models, too. Flat, relatively bland building supplies, stacked in a pile, soon become 3-dimensional objects. In this case, miniature buildings from various decades of the early to mid 20th Century. A 3D printer could do the job much easier and with more detail, yet spending up to 4-weeks cutting, gluing, painting and detailing a structure takes me to unexpected mental and psychological places. Thousands of psychic miles are traveled during this creative period.

Added to that, the next step is setting up and photographing the the buildings that were just made. A whole new set of creative muscles are used during this process. The memories of my childhood now are brought forward and overlaid onto the models in front of me. Like a force field that can be manipulated, my recollections of the past direct my hand and eye.

So the question remains: Why did I create Elgin Park? The deepest reason is to inspire people to tap into their own creativity using what skills they have, no matter how seemingly limited. Our imaginations want to materialize into this world. Visiting Elgin Park could be seen as the first stop on the inspiration highway.

Visit Elgin Park by visiting its dedicated Flickr account.