SONIA MELNIKOVA FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY

The GHOST TOWNS series consists of photographs taken in Randsburg, Garlock, Bodie, and Elizabethtown, abandoned mining towns in California and New Mexico, where life once was full of hope and promise, which now are left forlornly to deteriorate, leaving an industrial wasteland behind. Sometimes it feels as if we have no past. Old buildings are torn down instead of being restored, and mines and railroads are left forlornly to deteriorate, leaving an industrial wasteland behind. Having come from a country where nothing less old than two hundred years was considered old enough, I feel nostalgic for the past of my new country, which had been gone long before I arrived. Together with the GARAGE SALE, BOTTLED PAST, and RUSTY THINGS series, GHOST TOWNS is a reflection on discarded things and places of the past. A reflection of an abandoned church in the window of an abandoned house is all that's left, but a key is still hanging next to the door waiting for somebody to come back and unlock the past history, which in a way is not less important than that of the ruins of Pompei, Giza or Macchu Picchu....

Available as archival prints on acid-free fine-art rag-textured paper in two standard sizes: 11"x14" image (16"x20" matted, framed or not framed), and 16"x20" image (framed without a mat).