Photography News Issue 30 absolutephoto.com
Interview 42
TonyWorobiec Abandoned on the Plains Fine-art photographer Tony Worobiec has been shooting for over 36 years and has had 15 books published. Together he and his wife Eva have spent their time travelling to America to capture deserted properties of the High Plains. We find out what the journey involved…
go back over a similar ground and create a second book? What was your motivation? Initially it was just curiosity; since the publication of Ghosts we had engaged with other projects and had never returned.We just wanted to see howmuch the area had changed within the last 12 years. We also found it quite exhilarating driving vast distances over the northern High Plains, barely encountering vehicles on our travels. It is possibly as a result of this, that we included more landscapes in our new book than in the previous book. When travelling across America did you always intend to capture the images specifically for a book? Yes and no; we never dreamed that anyone would have been interested in our Ghosts in the Wilderness project, and we were totally surprised when we were contacted by Cameron Brown of Artists and Photographers Publication Limited, who offered us this opportunity. Similarly when we started the
Fragments of an American Dream project 20 months ago, it didn’t occur to us that it offered another publishing opportunity, although once we started to edit our images after the first trip, we realised another book was possible. With the following two trips, we became far more conscious about the balance and structure required for a possible book, so many of the shots were more targeted. Do you come across locations accidentally or do you know exactly where you’re heading? A bit of both; while we were familiar with some of the locations we featured, there were others that were new to us. For example, in the previous book we never explored western Minnesota, but based largely on a hunch, it proved to be quite profitable. With each of the three trips we had a definite travel plan, but because of the problems of weather, we invariably made a few impromptu changes. Places that functioned 12 years ago, that are now abandoned, offered fresh opportunities.
Interview by Jemma Dodd
What sparked your interest in this subject? It was rather by chance; disillusioned by Yellowstone, with dozens of photographers lining up to take the same shot, my wife Eva and I decided to head to an area where we were unlikely to meet other photographers, and ended up in Eastern Montana. Almost immediately we were struck by the scale of the abandonment. On our return to the UK, we saw a review for a book called Bad Land by the excellent travel writer Jonathan Raban; we read it and everything slipped into place. By sheer coincidence, he had investigated the same area. As a consequence, we made four further trips, before the publisher AAPPL offered to do Ghosts in the Wilderness; Abandoned America. Having released Ghosts in the Wilderness; Abandoned America why did you decide to
We also found it quite exhilarating driving vast distances over the northern High Plains, barely encountering vehicles on our travels
Red barn andmoon, north of Plentywood “Photographed just a few miles short of the Canadian border, it’s hard to imagine an area more remote than this.”
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