Tiny jail in Texola, Oklahoma

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

This is the jail in the little town of Texola, Oklahoma! The tiny jail, which is basically a single free-standing cell, was built in 1910. The windows have no glass, just steel bars on them and the door. There's a little gas heater inside, though I doubt it did much good in the winter, since the door is just the bars!

The stone slab sitting against the door is engraved with the names of the local high school's class of 1939. I don't know why it was left by the town's abandoned jail.

I stopped in Texola, which is right on the state line, on my way to New Mexico. I photographed the Water Hole #2 and The Place, but got rained on before I could locate the jail. On the way back to Indiana, we stopped again in Texola so that I could photograph the tiny jail too.

8-17-11

 

[richardvanle]

Good stuff as usual, Chris.

 

[Arlen]

That is cool! Great pic.

 

[d_ross]

Hi Chris I have seen countless books of road journeys in the US, one that I most often think of the book Wim Wender made when he was shooting locations for Paris Texas, and more recently "Approaching nowhere" by Jeff Brouws. It seems that America is one continually disappearing landscape, both in the areas you've been photographing and now it would seem in Wall Street as well. What you do is so important as we never know when the purpose of the images will change. Recently here in Christchurch we had two huge earthquakes, causing the demolition of 1200 buildings, many historic, in the CBD alone. As a result the photographs I made of the city in the 14 years Ive lived here, on a casual walking around style as many photographers do, have suddenly taken on a whole new meaning. As a result I/We now have a record of a city gone through one persons eyes. Anyway I really just wanted to say I'm enjoying your photographs from this trip.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Hi Chris I have seen countless books of road journeys in the US, one that I most often think of the book Wim Wender made when he was shooting locations for Paris Texas, and more recently "Approaching nowhere" by Jeff Brouws. It seems that America is one continually disappearing landscape, both in the areas you've been photographing and now it would seem in Wall Street as well. What you do is so important as we never know when the purpose of the images will change. Recently here in Christchurch we had two huge earthquakes, causing the demolition of 1200 buildings, many historic, in the CBD alone. As a result the photographs I made of the city in the 14 years Ive lived here, on a casual walking around style as many photographers do, have suddenly taken on a whole new meaning. As a result I/We now have a record of a city gone through one persons eyes. Anyway I really just wanted to say I'm enjoying your photographs from this trip.

Where I live in Indiana, things disappear all the time. So many of the places that I have photographed are now gone. I am interested in history as well as art and photography. I think of myself very much as a documentary photographer.

 

[sepiareverb]

I've been there! Not as an inmate but passing through. Long time ago, nice to see it still exists.

 

[d_ross]

I think of myself very much as a documentary photographer.[/quote]

Up until recent events here I never really thought of myself as a documentary photographer at all. I have always seen myself as an artist making work that spoke about what I thought and felt about things, from a personal perspective. It wasn't until I went through my archives and realized just how much of the city I had photographed before the earthquakes that I saw I had been a documentary photographer without even knowing it.

I'd like to see your part of America one day.

 

[hausen]

Yes it must be interesting times to be a photographer in Christchurch now.

 

[Steve Bellayr]

Chris is a good photographer so here is a good time to address an issue of SKY. We have all done it: find an interesting piece of architecture, etc. and photograph it with a large amount of sky/clouds above it, in still photography equivalents (?) or photographs like Ansel Adams, with magnificienct cloud formations over flora or mountains or buildings. Many years ago when I was studying film aesthetics this issue came up. There was director of westerns in the 1920's (whose name eludes me) who when he photographed his westerns deliberately chose to eliminate much of the sky and place his subject in the upper portion of the screen and emphasis the barren dry hostile dessert landscape the rider crossed. The west he wanted to emphasis was unfriendly and deadly. Then the director John Ford began making westerns. In his images he placed the subject in the bottom third of the frame thereby emphasizing the magnificient sky and the architectural beauty of the distant mountains. They were no longer hostile but cathedral. In Chris's photograph what if most of the sky was omitted and instead there was more landscape leading up to the isolated jail. How would that change the subject/image? Just a thought to ponder: How much sky to we need and how much landscape do we need?

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Up until recent events here I never really thought of myself as a documentary photographer at all. I have always seen myself as an artist making work that spoke about what I thought and felt about things, from a personal perspective. It wasn't until I went through my archives and realized just how much of the city I had photographed before the earthquakes that I saw I had been a documentary photographer without even knowing it.

I'd like to see your part of America one day.

My own work changed in the same way. I started out doing work in a purely formalist mode, where each image stood alone, independent of the rest of my work, and where the concern was the appearance of the thing being photographed as texture, light, tone, etc.

Over time, as I began studying history more intensively and as I began to take a greater interest in the social and economic issues in the modern world, my work became more documentary in focus. Most of my photographs still look good as individual images, but are all meant to be part of a greater whole that tells a story or informs the viewer about something that they didn't know about or had not noticed.

If you ever find your way here, we'll get together! I'd love to visit NZ too, hopefully someday I can afford to travel more widely.

 

[d_ross]

Yes it must be interesting times to be a photographer in Christchurch now.

Very interesting indeed, I'm currently working on a commission to produce an exhibition and book on the new urban and social landscape the city faces, having an opportunities from such a disaster as this can be conflicting emotionally at times.

 

[d_ross]

My own work changed in the same way. I started out doing work in a purely formalist mode, where each image stood alone, independent of the rest of my work, and where the concern was the appearance of the thing being photographed as texture, light, tone, etc.

Over time, as I began studying history more intensively and as I began to take a greater interest in the social and economic issues in the modern world, my work became more documentary in focus. Most of my photographs still look good as individual images, but are all meant to be part of a greater whole that tells a story or informs the viewer about something that they didn't know about or had not noticed.

If you ever find your way here, we'll get together! I'd love to visit NZ too, hopefully someday I can afford to travel more widely.

That's pretty much me in also. I have always wanted to show people things they hadn't felt, or at least how I felt, especially concerning social issues! I have also found that as I am making more books I'm realizing that there are some pictures that work well in that context that don't always as stand alone images, making me photograph things I may have otherwise ignored. I'll be sure to look you up if I get the chance to the US visit again.

 

[huntjump]

great shot Chris. You always find great little places all around this amazing country.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Chris is a good photographer so here is a good time to address an issue of SKY. We have all done it: find an interesting piece of architecture, etc. and photograph it with a large amount of sky/clouds above it, in still photography equivalents (?) or photographs like Ansel Adams, with magnificienct cloud formations over flora or mountains or buildings. Many years ago when I was studying film aesthetics this issue came up. There was director of westerns in the 1920's (whose name eludes me) who when he photographed his westerns deliberately chose to eliminate much of the sky and place his subject in the upper portion of the screen and emphasis the barren dry hostile dessert landscape the rider crossed. The west he wanted to emphasis was unfriendly and deadly. Then the director John Ford began making westerns. In his images he placed the subject in the bottom third of the frame thereby emphasizing the magnificient sky and the architectural beauty of the distant mountains. They were no longer hostile but cathedral. In Chris's photograph what if most of the sky was omitted and instead there was more landscape leading up to the isolated jail. How would that change the subject/image? Just a thought to ponder: How much sky to we need and how much landscape do we need?

That's a good question! I could have gotten closer and filled the frame more completely with the building. Something like this:

I chose not to because I wanted to emphasize the extreme smallness of the building. The tiny jail under the big sky makes it clear that this is a very small place, a very uncomfortable place to be locked up.

 

[d_ross]

For me the sky itself determines how it is used, depending whether it's positive or negative space and what is being said in the image and what the sky can add to or detract from the image.

Ive added a pic of a power pole and sky that I consider positive space sky and one of a tree that I consider negative space, but to me both convey the same things.

 

[Steve Bellayr]

I appreciate you getting back to me. Your photographs are always interesting. As for your answer to the question to you that I posted how would that image have been if you had almost no sky but land leading up to the building. In other words photographed in reverse. Someone like you is capable of doing it both ways and exploring the visual imagery of land v. sky. I like the b&w very much. Good contrast, just enough tightness and just a little bit of that "creepyness" or "alienation" that I like in images.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

I appreciate you getting back to me. Your photographs are always interesting. As for your answer to the question to you that I posted how would that image have been if you had almost no sky but land leading up to the building. In other words photographed in reverse. Someone like you is capable of doing it both ways and exploring the visual imagery of land v. sky. I like the b&w very much. Good contrast, just enough tightness and just a little bit of that "creepyness" or "alienation" that I like in images.

In the case of the Jail photo, it wouldn't have been good. The building is actually quite close to the road and the foreground looked ugly to me. Other places I have photographed do look good with more ground and less sky:

This shopping mall say empty for quite awhile before it was torn down. It was a nice place when I was a kid. Spent a lot of time with my parents shopping there. I like the effect of the cracked and neglected parking lot to emphasize the abandonment of the building.

This one had something interesting happening on the ground, a bathtub! This is in a slum neighborhood in downtown Fort wayne. I lived across the street for a year, till I could afford a nicer place.

This one also had a lot of interesting stuff happening in the foreground. It is in the inner city 'ghetto' in Fort Wayne, a far more impoverished place than the neighborhood with the bathtub. Despite that, someone felt joyous and wanted to spread Christmas cheer in the neighborhood.

 

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

For me the sky itself determines how it is used, depending whether it's positive or negative space and what is being said in the image and what the sky can add to or detract from the image.

Ive added a pic of a power pole and sky that I consider positive space sky and one of a tree that I consider negative space, but to me both convey the same things.

Those clouds in the light pole photo are INCREDIBLE!

 

[d_ross]

Those clouds in the light pole photo are INCREDIBLE!

They were incredible! and that's pretty much how they looked too. we get clouds like that here often, when two common weather patterns collide, but not usually as dramatic as this day.

 

[d_ross]

My local supermarket on Christmas day

My local supermarket on Christmas day

This supermarket car park is always full! So seeing it on the one day of the year when it's empty gave me the feeling of the place being abandoned.