SONIA MELNIKOVA FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY

The RUSTY THINGS series is comprised of photographs I took at abandoned California forts, ghost towns, coastal pumping stations, dumps, and other places where I found an unexpected wealth of beautiful shapes, colors and textures. 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 GHOST TOWNS, GARAGE SALE, and BOTTLED PAST series, the message of RUSTY THINGS is that real worth is not necessarily in the preciousness of the material or conventional attractiveness of things, and that beauty and artistic ideas can be found even in a pile of trash, a tarnished can, abandoned car, corroded fence, or a rusted lock that has not been opened for years. What's behind that locked door is for us to imagine.

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).