Ghost Town

Curator’s Statement

Ghost Town is a meditation on abandoned commercial enterprises, the result of an economic or natural disaster, in towns and cities everywhere. The emptiness and decay in the iconic signs and forlorn window shops are faithfully gathered and recorded by Patrick Sansone and Richard Klein in their photographs taken during road trips and in their on-going research. The poetics that these left-behind artifacts embody are rendered in photography and assemblage as each artist navigates their own feelings about this subject. 

Part homage, part cautionary tale, these works evoke memories of similar signs and locations that many of us have encountered in our own travels and daily life. The messages their images telegraph to me become an endless scroll of possible narratives. Who were the people that occupied these businesses? Why did the business, and often the entire town fold? 

The attraction I personally have to these works is about wistfulness for the remnants of the ghosts of the past in the cruddy, faded colors, peeling paint, and broken glass. I have a long-standing interest in the Moderne Design of the 1930s-60s used both in the architecture and the lettering on these storefronts and signs, which signaled velocity, ambition, and style. 

There is a frailty implied in these works, often tinged with a dry sense of humor. 

Ellen Hackl Fagan

Artist and Founder/Director of ODETTA Gallery