A home and farm house, Trumansburg, New York, 2003. Earlier in the day, i stopped by to see if i could return that evening to do time exposures with the full moon as illumination. It turned out that two sisters lived there, worked the farm, and, i believe, one of the sistes was also a nurse in Ithaca.
Inside and out, nothing had changed here. Every where you looked was a ready-made shot rich in a living patina that’s hard to come across anymore.
I shot between 2:00 and 4:00am but it was too clear and i would only get safeties and would have to return again for another peak fall full moon. Here the fall color was still a full week off.
Safety shots are required since the threat of complete disappearance is not just real, it’s random and can be quick, and, realistically how many clear full moon, peak fall color events will occur while i’m still healthy enough to make the trip.
I made 16×20 prints of their home and mailed the prints to them in 2004, and finally made it back in 2005 during another full moon trip to the area which is very close to Toughanak Falls. I cruised up and down their road – about a five mile stretch of not many farms and homes, but couldn’t find the home, which is odd since it’s the most distinctive by far.
Finally i stopped at a home and farm a couple of miles down the road. He told me that there was a fire and that the home exists no more, and that the sisters didn’t make it either.
Those shots i took were only safety shots, as i intended to return at peak autumn color under full moon conditions. Safety shots are done because reality can be so fluid, sometimes explosive and unexpected.
After finding out about the tragedy, i was bothered by the fact that i had sent both sisters moon-lit shots of their home which already had obvious “haunted” qualities about it. In fact, that night i spent some hours outside their home looking up at their windows, thinking about it, even in all my objectitvity.
But i think i was so bothered because it’s really the story of RealStill – after i show up, usually things disapear. I realized that as an art world recluse, i am part of the greater unkown so they wouldn’t have known that i have shot disappearing America for 43 years – pursuing the about to be gone, that had a similar patina as this one. But i was not thinking – gone – here, just capturing an old home in its own organic descent on a working farm under a full moon in October, 2003. Did they intuitively sense perhaps this was the master of prefiguring and predicting disappearance, that was outside our windows while sleeping that night? No, when you work hardon a farm, sleep is what’s importntant.
In retrospect it looks like fairly cheery atmosphere, though – blue skies, a few clouds streaming in the one hour exposure of Ektar 25. But who knows what they thought? Hopefully they liked it. I had sent a letter explaining they were safety shots and i would do the real deal as soon as the natural world allowed with the timing of full moon, peak leaf color and an interesting sky.
Showing up for a targeted shot and finding absolutely no trace of the structure, sometimes the next day, in this case, two years, is always a hit. And it’s not the first time a fire, and not economic decline, caused the vanishing.
Nevertheless, memory and concern begin and end with the the Heavencamp sisters, not the shot, which is usually an artifact from some struggle, or simply the post facto thing left over from living.
At the very least, i have documentation of a place that’s gone, possibly the only record of what was here. Most likely even the pictures i mailed them are gone as well. Like much of RealStill the pictures might, in the future, be of interest to the survivors of time, the art of timing, or those curious about its effects.