SONIA MELNIKOVA ART PHOTOGRAPHY

Sometimes it feels as if we want to erase the past. Old buildings are torn down instead of being restored, and mines and railroads are left forlornly to deteriorate leaving industrial wasteland behind. Having come from the part of the world where a hundred years was not considered old enough, I feel nostalgic for the past of this land, which had been gone long before I arrived. The LEFT BEHIND series consists of photographs I took of deserted mining “ghost” towns in California, Arizona, and New Mexico, where life once was full of hope and promise. Together with my other series with a focus on the themes of past and impermanence, LEFT BEHIND is a reflection on discarded things and places of the past whose history, in a way, is not less important than that of the ruins of Pompei or Macchu Picchu. I hope that viewers can look past the sadness of wear and decay and see character and a subtle kind of dignity and beauty.

Featured: Bodie, CA; Garlock, CA; Randsburg, CA; Elizabethtown, NM; Vulture, AZ

Related series: OLD THINGS, BOTTLED PAST, ANGEL ISLAND STORIES