Abandoned Church, South Carolina

Seen in a small town in South Carolina. I fought the urge

to procrastinate, stopped the car, and made the picture.

 

I seem to be on somewhat of a roll lately on this theme of abandonment. I have no idea why, but this interest in photographing abandoned structures showed up in the early 1970's when, on a visit to my parents in southern Indiana, I spent a day or two driving and photographing around the countryside where I grew up. Many of the homes of people I had known were abandoned; some were falling down. I told Louise at the time that I did not understand why I was drawn to photographing old structures, because "it was certain that I would never make a dime doing it."

But more than 20 years later, I did indeed "make a dime" photographing old buildings, as my pictures of barns bearing "See Rock City" signs, many of them abandoned, were published in a very successful coffee-table book. Rock City Barns: A Passing Era won many awards and sold nearly 30,000 copies. I no longer have any to sell, but used copies are still readily available at Amazon, and perhaps other places. I notice that occasionally new copies turn up, but I don't know where they come from. Maybe some of my distributors from back in the day find boxes of copies tucked away somewhere in their warehouses.

The abandoned church above was photographed as we were going through a small town in South Carolina on a pleasure trip to Charleston in the 1980s. I made the photo with a Minolta Autocord twin-lens reflex camera and Fujichrome 100 transparency film.

Photograph and text copyright 2022, David B.Jenkins.

I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.

Soli Gloria Deo

For the glory of God alone

My most recent book, Backroads and Byways of Georgia, is a 304-page soft-cover with more than 200 color photographs. Published by Countryman Press, it is priced at $22.95. Signed and inscribed copies are available directly from me at (423) 240-2324 or djphoto@vol.com.