04.10.13
Interview: Troy Paiva
Troy Paiva is a photographer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He's been exploring and shooting out of the way places for many years, mostly in the middle of the night. His pictures have been featured in Light Painting Photography, Resource Magazine, and also recently online with the San Francisco Chronicle.
Marguerite Avenue: There are many haunting images being evoked here, scenes that catch the viewer off-guard. What are some of the ideas or concepts you are incorporating, or playing with?
Troy Paiva: My work is ruins-based, capturing the last moments of all this ‘real life America’, fast turning into mythology. It's a juxtaposition of straight historical documentation and unfettered artistic creativity, keying on and enhancing the inherently evocative nature of these sites. I'm after a visceral reaction with the single image -- the cerebral one comes later when reviewing the body of work. But I really want that initial gut reaction, that "Wow" moment.
MA: You get around to some very isolated and out-of-the-way places for your photographs. How do you find these? What is a criteria for your search?
Troy: Most of my career it's been a matter of driving around on back roads, looking for stuff to shoot. I've used old gas station road maps too, it's amazing how many towns appear on a '50s road map that don't exist today, even on Google earth. Speaking of Google Earth, I've combed hundreds of square miles of the Mojave on high magnification, looking for sites. I also get a lot of people e-mailing me about locations. I've compiled quite a list from all over the planet, more than I can get to in a lifetime of full moons.
MA: Do you believe in luck, or chance, or fate when it comes to the images you collect?
Troy: That's a pretty broad philosophical question there. I ascribe to the old “you create your own luck” thing. You have to be in the right place at the right time, but you also have to be prepared to take advantage of it when a lucky moment falls in your lap. Fate? Pre-destiny? I dunno.
MA: Do you believe in the concept of Karma?
Troy: The way I learned it, Karma is the same thing as "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Every religion says the same basic thing: don't be a jerk, or it will come back to haunt you. I'm pretty irreligious, but I try to stick to that.
MA: Do you feel connection with the places and things you take pictures of?
Troy: Very strongly. I'd even go so far as to call it an obsession. I love these places as if they're old relatives on their deathbeds. I love the act of exploring and shooting them. If I didn't I would have stopped doing this 20 years ago.
MA: You shoot at night. Do you ever get spooked? Have you had any weird experiences while you were shooting your work?
Troy: You can't do this kind of photography if you spook easily, because yes, these places can be creepy in daylight. At night the creep factor really spikes. But a lot of those spooky feelings are bred into us–from a very early age we're taught to be scared of abandoned places. That they are inhabited by ghosts and demons, that no good can come of visiting them. It's been a common literary trope for 100 generations, so long that it's practically stamped on us genetically. I've never seen a ghost, and I've spent nights in dozens of supposedly haunted places. I've experienced a lot of things that people could interpret as ghosts, but were easily explained away as wind under the eaves, or animals in the walls. And even if there really were ghosts, what can they do to me?
But yeah, I've had plenty of creepy and weird experiences. Many of these sites are loaded with real things to worry about like black mold, asbestos and other toxic goodies. Rotten floors and railings to fall through, and enough broken glass, jagged metal and rusty nails to tear you to shreds. I've had several lifetimes worth of run-ins with rattlers, black widows, bats, and skunks. And then there's the crazy people you run into: tweakers, vandals and metal thieves . . . and shotgun toting desert rat property owners that think I fall into one of those categories. Lotsa cops too, I've had my share of awkward confrontations with every kind, from minimum wage security guards to Federal Marshalls. It's always an adventure.
MA: Of the aircraft images, which one(s) are most memorable for you, in terms of setting them up for the shoot?
Marguerite Avenue: There are many haunting images being evoked here, scenes that catch the viewer off-guard. What are some of the ideas or concepts you are incorporating, or playing with?
Troy Paiva: My work is ruins-based, capturing the last moments of all this ‘real life America’, fast turning into mythology. It's a juxtaposition of straight historical documentation and unfettered artistic creativity, keying on and enhancing the inherently evocative nature of these sites. I'm after a visceral reaction with the single image -- the cerebral one comes later when reviewing the body of work. But I really want that initial gut reaction, that "Wow" moment.
MA: You get around to some very isolated and out-of-the-way places for your photographs. How do you find these? What is a criteria for your search?
Troy: Most of my career it's been a matter of driving around on back roads, looking for stuff to shoot. I've used old gas station road maps too, it's amazing how many towns appear on a '50s road map that don't exist today, even on Google earth. Speaking of Google Earth, I've combed hundreds of square miles of the Mojave on high magnification, looking for sites. I also get a lot of people e-mailing me about locations. I've compiled quite a list from all over the planet, more than I can get to in a lifetime of full moons.
MA: Do you believe in luck, or chance, or fate when it comes to the images you collect?
Troy: That's a pretty broad philosophical question there. I ascribe to the old “you create your own luck” thing. You have to be in the right place at the right time, but you also have to be prepared to take advantage of it when a lucky moment falls in your lap. Fate? Pre-destiny? I dunno.
MA: Do you believe in the concept of Karma?
Troy: The way I learned it, Karma is the same thing as "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Every religion says the same basic thing: don't be a jerk, or it will come back to haunt you. I'm pretty irreligious, but I try to stick to that.
MA: Do you feel connection with the places and things you take pictures of?
Troy: Very strongly. I'd even go so far as to call it an obsession. I love these places as if they're old relatives on their deathbeds. I love the act of exploring and shooting them. If I didn't I would have stopped doing this 20 years ago.
MA: You shoot at night. Do you ever get spooked? Have you had any weird experiences while you were shooting your work?
Troy: You can't do this kind of photography if you spook easily, because yes, these places can be creepy in daylight. At night the creep factor really spikes. But a lot of those spooky feelings are bred into us–from a very early age we're taught to be scared of abandoned places. That they are inhabited by ghosts and demons, that no good can come of visiting them. It's been a common literary trope for 100 generations, so long that it's practically stamped on us genetically. I've never seen a ghost, and I've spent nights in dozens of supposedly haunted places. I've experienced a lot of things that people could interpret as ghosts, but were easily explained away as wind under the eaves, or animals in the walls. And even if there really were ghosts, what can they do to me?
But yeah, I've had plenty of creepy and weird experiences. Many of these sites are loaded with real things to worry about like black mold, asbestos and other toxic goodies. Rotten floors and railings to fall through, and enough broken glass, jagged metal and rusty nails to tear you to shreds. I've had several lifetimes worth of run-ins with rattlers, black widows, bats, and skunks. And then there's the crazy people you run into: tweakers, vandals and metal thieves . . . and shotgun toting desert rat property owners that think I fall into one of those categories. Lotsa cops too, I've had my share of awkward confrontations with every kind, from minimum wage security guards to Federal Marshalls. It's always an adventure.
MA: Of the aircraft images, which one(s) are most memorable for you, in terms of setting them up for the shoot?
Troy: The picture here, "Cockpit Heater", was memorable, because there was a gigantic bee hive under the co-pilot's seat. Even at midnight it was still very hot and they were buzzing around me the whole time I worked that set up. Another "funny" thing: about half of the work shot at the secret boneyard was done with the camera taped to the tripod. It was a very stormy weekend, and at the start of the second night, the wind blew my tripod over, ripping the whole bottom out of the camera. Thank god for gaffers tape! I used about 6 feet of it tightly wound around and around . . . and cut a window in the back to access the LCD and buttons. I still can't believe it worked.
MA: What about the psychological angle of the work. Do you think certain people will identify with the images, especially the aircraft, as themselves?
Troy: As a reminder of their own mortality and the ultimate finiteness of everything we create? Yeah, I get that kinda thing a lot. I think that's ultimately the main attraction to any art that's ruins-based.
MA: Do you see disorder, or a new order, in the remnants of precise things now gone to seed?
Troy: It's a different order. It's (seemingly) random nature consuming this highly ordered and technical world we've created. All these aircraft were made of thousands of parts, milled and machined to the .00001 of an inch and now they are crawling with rust and decay, being reduced back into their basic elements. I love the poetry in that.
MA: Through entropy, things formerly ordered, going into disorder, can there be a new kind of harmony?
Troy: Yeah, the harmony of nature.
MA: Are there any other of your photographs, or experiences in taking them, that have stuck with you in a deeply personal way?
Troy: All this work is deeply personal. The first 10 years I did it I never showed the work to anyone except a few friends and family. It's all shot to please me only. This body of work is the distillation of my entire life's experience: growing up in car obsessed California at the peak of the '60s muscle car era, my awestruck explorations of “Golden-Age” desert ghost towns and the freshly abandoned bypassed 2-lane roads as a teenager in the late '70s, and my job through the '80s and '90s as a toy designer/illustrator, on the Micro Machines toy car line, creating cars and roadside/infrastructure playsets. When I discovered the potential of night photography and light painting in 1989, something in my head clicked–I knew immediately that they could be used to capture these subjects that I had spent a lifetime gaining sensitivity towards. Turns out, it was all leading to this.
Maybe it is fate...
MA: Has this work changed your thinking?
Troy: I think it's more that it's perfectly aligned with my thinking.
MA: Do you ever feel that the camera gets in the way? Or is it the equipment?
Troy: Of my creativity? No, my brain doesn’t work like that. Having worked as an artist my whole life, I understand that every kind of media has its limitations. Just master the tool, and get everything you can out of it. Keep experimenting, keep pushing yourself. The main thing standing in my way at this point is the lack of money. For travel, for promotion.
MA: What is it about your work that makes you laugh, and what is it about your work that can lead to sadness?
Troy: I've been given access to (or snuck into) countless places that the public never gets to see. Sites that are strictly off limits. I love that "I can't believe I'm in here taking pictures" feeling. It makes me giddy.
The melancholia sinks in when I stop to think about the fate of almost every single thing I've shot. The SS Independence: broken up in India. The epic Pearsonville junkyard, with its thousands of 50s and 60s cars: crushed. The Oak Knoll hospital: Imploded. You get the point: it's the almost immediate loss of every single site I shoot. Hundreds of locations, all gone. It wears on you after a while.
MA: What have you got going on now?
MA: What about the psychological angle of the work. Do you think certain people will identify with the images, especially the aircraft, as themselves?
Troy: As a reminder of their own mortality and the ultimate finiteness of everything we create? Yeah, I get that kinda thing a lot. I think that's ultimately the main attraction to any art that's ruins-based.
MA: Do you see disorder, or a new order, in the remnants of precise things now gone to seed?
Troy: It's a different order. It's (seemingly) random nature consuming this highly ordered and technical world we've created. All these aircraft were made of thousands of parts, milled and machined to the .00001 of an inch and now they are crawling with rust and decay, being reduced back into their basic elements. I love the poetry in that.
MA: Through entropy, things formerly ordered, going into disorder, can there be a new kind of harmony?
Troy: Yeah, the harmony of nature.
MA: Are there any other of your photographs, or experiences in taking them, that have stuck with you in a deeply personal way?
Troy: All this work is deeply personal. The first 10 years I did it I never showed the work to anyone except a few friends and family. It's all shot to please me only. This body of work is the distillation of my entire life's experience: growing up in car obsessed California at the peak of the '60s muscle car era, my awestruck explorations of “Golden-Age” desert ghost towns and the freshly abandoned bypassed 2-lane roads as a teenager in the late '70s, and my job through the '80s and '90s as a toy designer/illustrator, on the Micro Machines toy car line, creating cars and roadside/infrastructure playsets. When I discovered the potential of night photography and light painting in 1989, something in my head clicked–I knew immediately that they could be used to capture these subjects that I had spent a lifetime gaining sensitivity towards. Turns out, it was all leading to this.
Maybe it is fate...
MA: Has this work changed your thinking?
Troy: I think it's more that it's perfectly aligned with my thinking.
MA: Do you ever feel that the camera gets in the way? Or is it the equipment?
Troy: Of my creativity? No, my brain doesn’t work like that. Having worked as an artist my whole life, I understand that every kind of media has its limitations. Just master the tool, and get everything you can out of it. Keep experimenting, keep pushing yourself. The main thing standing in my way at this point is the lack of money. For travel, for promotion.
MA: What is it about your work that makes you laugh, and what is it about your work that can lead to sadness?
Troy: I've been given access to (or snuck into) countless places that the public never gets to see. Sites that are strictly off limits. I love that "I can't believe I'm in here taking pictures" feeling. It makes me giddy.
The melancholia sinks in when I stop to think about the fate of almost every single thing I've shot. The SS Independence: broken up in India. The epic Pearsonville junkyard, with its thousands of 50s and 60s cars: crushed. The Oak Knoll hospital: Imploded. You get the point: it's the almost immediate loss of every single site I shoot. Hundreds of locations, all gone. It wears on you after a while.
MA: What have you got going on now?
Troy: I cracked a few amazing new locations this winter, and have been shooting the hell out of them for the last few months. I've got some great new work in the can.
MA: And after that?
Troy: I'm holding another fully booked workshop at the end of May. Several times a year I rent a junkyard in the desert near Los Angeles, filled with movie prop vehicles and a full blown recycling facility. It's an amazing location. We lock ourselves in and shoot for 3 nights, with many hours of classroom discussion and critique during the day. It's very immersive and intensive. Hardcore fun. People from all over the world have come out. Australia, South America, all over the USA. Half the people who take it are repeat customers–these people know: it's an amazingly good time and allows you to be extremely productive. If it sounds interesting, you should get on the mailing list. All the info is here: http://lostamerica.com/night-photography-workshop/
MA: And after that?
Troy: I'm holding another fully booked workshop at the end of May. Several times a year I rent a junkyard in the desert near Los Angeles, filled with movie prop vehicles and a full blown recycling facility. It's an amazing location. We lock ourselves in and shoot for 3 nights, with many hours of classroom discussion and critique during the day. It's very immersive and intensive. Hardcore fun. People from all over the world have come out. Australia, South America, all over the USA. Half the people who take it are repeat customers–these people know: it's an amazingly good time and allows you to be extremely productive. If it sounds interesting, you should get on the mailing list. All the info is here: http://lostamerica.com/night-photography-workshop/
About the Author:
Troy Paiva, AKA Lost America has been shooting the abandoned American West at night, by the light of the full moon, since 1989.
|
More from Troy Paiva:04:10:13: Photos |
