"The Blue Room" by Eugene Richards

There are artists whose work you come across that leave an indelible mark. Photographer Eugene Richards with his 2008 book, "The Blue Room," is one of them. It's like Robert Frank's "The Americans," except it's of abandoned houses. Every frame perfectly composed, a story unto itself. There's a poetry of objects, of color, of decay, a life once lived... time and weather. What's interesting also is that he seems to be known for his human subjects, using a style of stark human realism as a means of raising social awareness. But here is a collection devoid of human form. Just presence, ghosts, and in the case of a few animals, beautiful forms left behind in the form of freshly half-eaten carcasses in the snow, or an owl, stuck in it's last flight, pre-decay. Perhaps it's an attempt to grasp at the elemental essence underneath all the "noise" of his life's body of work, of disease, poverty, addiction, suffering... the houses replacing human form, remnants of a carcass without its life spirit. He captures the life energy of decay itself, its unstoppable march.

I imagine what Richards' cross-country meanderings must've been like. Moving through that country where time moves slooowly. Breathing through these spaces. Looking and capturing time itself.