Haunted

Towns hold what people were, and when a town lets things go, the signs are physical. Those I can photograph. When I do it well, the viewer may feel a blissful melancholy. I drive to Denton, Texas, often. I go to some area I’ve walked a hundred times and try to find something new. It’s a good game. In the end, I pick up fajitas at Ambro’s Taqueria and come home with one or two keepers. This rent house near Texas Woman’s University says a lot, and yet... that pink rake has probably been put away by now. Maybe the grill has been dragged from the wall to cook some 80/20 burgers. Perhaps a young woman sat in that rocking chair, smoked a cigarette, slapped the last autumn mosquito dead on her calf, and put off facing Monday until the sun went down. Near a college campus, this is where every house and everything in it ends up: cleared out, painted a neutral color, and re-listed. A photograph is a ghost. It’s the photographer who’s haunted.