“That’s so Ohio.” It’s the best example of how the state got weird—bad weird. Its foundation is the flip, particularly up in northern Ohio. We had cities more liberal than New York, and now? That’s a flip.
For the last ten years of that historic phenomenon called the Rust Belt, Ohio was considered a symbol of complete squareness. It became so square, so uncool, that it flipped entirely and became—for lack of a better word—cool.
So, sitting somewhere in between the tail end of the Rust Belt and the rise of the greatest flipper in the world, J.D. Vance, Ohio enjoyed years of actually being perceived as cool. A lot of that came from the huge growth of urban exploration and shooting abandonment sites. Then you had the music—the Black Keys or Nine Inch Nails, but also stalwarts like the Numbers Band, keeping the genuine article alive in Kent. Punk and new wave left a real mark on the state. And finally, you had the slow, agonizing rise of its underdog professional sports teams, culminating in the Cavs’ World Championship title.
By the 1980s, Cleveland had the biggest stadium in the American League and the lowest ticket sales to show for it. Probably for a good reason, because those teams were unusual. We went from the ghosts of Bob Feller straight to the chaos of Ten Cent Beer Night.
But with regards to this essay, it’s obviously mostly focused outside of the big city. It’s out in the rural areas, the small towns, or just out there in the silence.
And if you want more of the dumbass tradition, Ohio has always had that with Ohio State, the perennial American winners beating the brains out of somebody on a Saturday. There’s a reason the Pro Football Hall of Fame is down the road in Canton. It belongs there. But there is no good reason the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is in Cleveland, beyond the fact that they had some of the best, most desperate rock fans in the world—blue-collar kids pulling wire and pouring steel. But let’s face it, that building should’ve gone to Memphis. Dare I say, Elvis? Graceland? Stax Records? How about Sun Studio where the whole thing was actually born, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, B.B. King, and the real sweat of Beale Street? Memphis actually earned it.
For a while there, Ohio was fake it to make it. It was sort of like Williamsburg, Brooklyn,when the hipsters showed up.
I mentioned exploration as being the messenger for the weird, sublime wonders of Ohio. A lot of the shots in this essay are related to that specific category of photography that goes out looking for a fistfight between beauty and ugliness, even without any experience of the place. Theirs can just imagine, but not with RealStill.
Ohio was never a postcard. It was always a place to leave, not stay. As a landscape, it runs right at the bottom of the barrel of states I would choose to photograph. But I shot it anyways. You know, the pain of “it wasn’t cool.”Unfortunately, whether I like it or not, this beautiful decay is what the state became known for. For a while, anyway, and it was a long time, at least as long as a person’s life. Places taht were obviously headed toward disapppearance. Best part it cut captured before going, and before abandonment, there is to say, occupied, functional and operational. Ohio.
What’s left is a big empty where development hasn’t seeded, and the rest would be unrecognizable if you had left for 10 years and returned. Except that it looks like every other place in America now.
A name heavy with vowels. It’s an Indian name—Shawnee for “beautiful river,” just the same way Michigan is Ottawa for “beautiful lake.” And Erie? That comes from the Erie tribe. The cat people. The panther. It’s a place named for the water and the wild. Then, just to show you how absurd the modern flip has become, you get Ramaswamy showing up in Toledo for a first meeting running for governor, floating the idea of renaming Lake Erie. What are you going to name it, Lake Trump, Lake Feller? Especially when its indigenous, original, and endemic name is such a wonder: Lake of the Panther.
That’s what I mean about the flip in Ohio. This essay isn’t about that stupid ass shit and its different stages of freakiness, but it’s what’s been there all along, and endemic to Ohio. In the exact same way that Oklahoma would have its own look, feel, and history. And boy, does it ever.