They began taking the pictures when they were dating although they never really dated. They met in high school and were immediately inseparable. Without ever talking about it. They got married, mostly as a goof because they were on a road trip out West and in a rest area close to Las Vegas saw a rack of brochures, one with a coupon for a drive-through wedding chapel. They have been together for decades and never talk about the relationship. What would be the point? It simply is.
Perhaps the first photo was a dare, a way to flirt. Taking pictures of one another and encouraging each other to take off their clothes. They would have required no urging. Not because they were vain, but because it was pleasurable and because neither had the slightest self-consciousness about their bodies. After that, it was something they did. They posed naked in ruined tobacco barns and abandoned factories and half fallen houses and took photos. Sometimes together. Sometimes separately.
Early on, maybe there was the slight thrill at the possibility of being seen by someone coming, of a car passing by, of a walker, but mostly there was the cautiousness around broken glass, wood snags, rusted nails, rodents, poison ivy. Sometimes people approach. If they’re not done, they finish. If they’re done, they leave. If they’re asked what they’re doing, they say, “taking pictures.” They never break in. They never force their way, although if a fence is down, they will walk over it.
They didn’t think in terms of statements, but those first photos might have said something like, Look how beautiful and young we are amidst this decay. They were studies in contrast, the bodies and buildings. Then, as the years continued, the photos may have said something about being middle aged and recognizing the beauty of the ruins, the half-collapsed garages, the rust, missing shingles, broken planks, windows in shards, the walls with no roofs, the old General Stores with faded signs of products long gone out of business. Maybe someone would see an implied hope at renovation and second chances. Now, if anything, it’s identification. The ruins of their bodies in the ruins of these places. They’ve become what they have been photographing.
A life’s work. Two lives’ work. Hundreds of binders, albums, and folders of the photos. They’ve never done anything with them, shown them to anyone, or talked about them. They don’t consider themselves artists; this is just something they do. And, they haven’t talked about what will happen to the work after they’re dead. They listen to the Avett Brothers sometimes as they go along back roads, but when they hear Seth Avett sing a Greg Brown song about “an old couple burning their love letters so their children won’t be shocked,” they don’t talk about it even though maybe that’s what these photos are. Love letters. Ones they’re still doing.
Maybe someday, when one of them dies, the other will take the albums and leave them in a neglected building somewhere. Let them get waterlogged and moldy. Have teenagers find them and be titillated and puzzled and dismantle them or set them on fire. For now, when they see an abandoned building, returning to the landscape, they pull over. These days they don’t have cameras. Just iPhones, which takes far less time to have ready, which balances out, because it takes them far longer to get out of their clothes, and they walk more gingerly across the ground. They find their positions, and then they look at one another.
A faculty member at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, JOSEPH MILLS has published Bleachers: 54 Linked Fictions and several collections of poetry with Press 53, most recently Bodies in Motion: Poems About Dance. His most recent poetry collection The Holiday Cycle is forthcoming in 2025.
