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Andrew Evans
Andrew Evans
Ghost City
In the fall of 2005, on the eve of its demise, I showed myself into the empty Philadelphia Convention Hall. I stared out from the stage that had hosted the Beatles, Rolling Stones, the Pope, the Democrats, the Republicans, Wilt Chamberlain, The Grateful Dead, and so many more. What a vibrant place this had been, and there I was inside it's ghost, with its layers of history already partially peeled away. Something happened in that moment - a feeling of being trapped between the past and the future.
Concurrently, I had been fascinated with a 1918 photograph of Hog Island shipyard. Hog Island was a massive structure, built on an emergency basis towards the end of World War I, and promptly decommissioned once the war ended. The photo captures this ethereal structure in a haze of activity sometime during this fleeting moment in history.
The day after my moment in Convention Hall, a swarm of clawed booms descended upon the building. I was compelled to photograph the process. I started taking a shot from the same spot every day. I wasn't sure what I was after, but the process was fascinating and I wanted to capture a record of it. I continued on in this fashion with several other building demolitions, filing away the photos. Eventually, the magic of layering the images revealed itself and spurred this ongoing project.
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