4: a sense of place

A Bisbee state of mind

Bisbee is a mountain town in the south of Arizona. It has a bohemian air that differs from the landscape and the towns of the South West. Most of the towns are on flat desert terrain – scorching heat in the summer and dry winters. Bisbee is built at the bottom, and clinging to the sides, of a canyon so the cooler temperature is at odds from the rest of that area of the state and along with that the atmosphere of the town.

Nobody would build a town here without very good reason and in the late 19th century that reason was copper - by the early 1900’s a town of 20,000 people had sprung up next to the mine and it was the largest city between New Orleans and San Francisco. The town’s architecture reflects this boom time of the Victorian era and when the flat land at the bottom of the canyon was full, the miner’s shacks began appearing along its sides like an alpine town. By the time the mine finally ceased operation in 1975, the population was down to a couple of thousand inhabitants and a great number of buildings in need of desperate attention.

The town became known as a cheap place to live. Artists and retirees soon discovered it, saved it from disappearing and now it is a thriving community of around 6,000 with a “live and let live” feel – distinctly different from the very conservative State in which it sits. The community today is made up of disparate parts from everywhere – it’s an eclectic and diverse group containing retired miners, hippies, artists, musicians and escapees from the conservatism of the South West. One gets the feeling in Bisbee that the residents care about the community and the success of the town and that they know to keep thriving and to be able to attract like minded visitors, they need to keep the town unique but real, and distinctly quirky – offering something to visitors but not being overwhelmed by them. For me that is part of the attraction and the charm – if everyone is turning right, I want to turn left and soon enough I seem to be stood in my kind of place, lost in the most unusual and therefore interesting spots.

• I have tried to achieve a sense of place (or possibly a sense of the “out of place”) – to give a viewer the feeling of the town so that, even if they didn’t know how different it was from the rest of the State, they would get a flavour that this was somewhere a little eccentric. Like most small towns Bisbee is struggling economically and I wanted this to come through, and also to show that this isn’t a place that would suit everyone – if neat and tidy are a preference then this town wouldn’t fit the bill.

• I think my photographs have been successful in giving a sense of place as far as the buildings and the “external” go but I have fallen short on the people photographs a little. With hindsight it might have been more successful if I had managed to get a shot of someone who works in one of the more unusual shops or an artist from a gallery going about their business. Most of the people I had photographed were visitors and seemed a little bland against the town itself and also not a part of the town I was trying to show as, like myself, visiting. I have, however, managed to give a sense of the people via the buildings and space they inhabit.

• If I had been taking photographs with no end result in mind, no assignment, then I probably wouldn’t have felt the need to “set the scene” so much. I know the town well so wouldn’t have needed to show its location or the houses on the side of the canyon etc. I would have focussed more on shots that, to the viewer, could have been anywhere but would have been meaningful and intimate to me as an essence of Bisbee.

Usually I find that taking photos helps me to get to grips with a place the first time through – the more I return, the less opportunity I find for photos as the familiarity is already there. With Bisbee it still interests me with every visit and it hold on to its quirkiness. There are many American towns built around the same time as Bisbee in great hope but nothing remains other than the streets – civilizations came, stayed for a while and moved on. There is something very American to me about a place managing to turn itself around and attract a certain kind of visitor. I see things in Bisbee that I don’t seem to see anywhere else.

No tripod or flash used.



Entertaining

I couldn’t get a very good picture of these guys by shooting head on due to the people watching them – I was behind taller people and they were stood in front of a shop so I thought the picture wouldn’t work very well if it were part of an article as there was too much going on. I moved to the side where they were against a bright wall and concentrated on getting enough of each man in – one flamboyant and one subdued by comparison. I have cropped this slightly at the top to improve the framing.

Bird Nest boots


Turning old into new and making bird boxes out of used cowboy boots. I felt this picture gave a flavour of both the South West and an idea of the shop without needing to show any more of the store.





Notice board

I like notice boards in small towns – the busier they are makes me think that the more of a community there is and how they reflect the everyday life.  Everything that happens in the town will get pinned up somewhere.  This tells me about the people and the sense of community in the town even in their absence.  A notice board suggests to me that people don’t want to feel so isolated in a remote location.

 

Lou the Great

This made me wish I had had time to be in town to see Lou, the “internationally acclaimed storyteller”.  I have a feeling that he may not have strayed too far from Bisbee but maybe small travels are looked at as international in this remote area.  As with the previous picture the signs are a substitute for people – confirming their presence.


  

Reflections

The window looked like a picture frame as the reflection was so clear in the strong winter light.  I liked the tatty shop window reflecting one of the better hotels.  Just seen in the shop are some skulls and associated rubbish and although there are plenty of more interesting shops in the town, I felt if looking at an article I wouldn’t necessarily feel like visiting based on what shops sell – but seeing a more interesting take on showing the shop and the area opposite might make me want to know more.




Artists house

A local artist has decorated his house in quite a startling style but the neighbours don’t seem to mind as it all adds to the flavour of the town.  This extravagantly adorned house sits next to a house that is simply extravagant – the interesting next to the dull, the bizarre next to the sedate.  The artist’s house gives me a sense of the artist, the neighbouring house gives me a sense of money moving in.

 

Hillary

In conservative and Republican Arizona, Bisbee provides some Democratic relief.  The owner of this car is clearly a big Hillary Clinton fan – not a inch is spared and the roof is covered with armies of small figurines for reasons best known to the owner.



Red and Green

I came across very little tourist paraphernalia in the shops to advertise Bisbee – no postcards or associated tourist tat. I did however find a magnet with this house on it so took some time to seek it out.  It’s another example of a house that the owner decided to decorate but painting it didn’t seem enough – in this case the entire house has been decorated with items painted red – bikes, pans, chairs, violins – no common theme to the items.  The house is at odds with the rest of the street and yet fits perfectly. Taking the shot head on it looked more like a wall than a house so have taking at an angle and allowed the house, railings and road to all converge.

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Comparisons



I have just seen an exhibition of photography by the film director Wim Wenders (outlined in the Exhibition section of the blog) and was struck by his photos of small towns, deserted and disappearing places. I have picked a couple of his photos: a flat frontal picture of a store, brightly painted but totally deserted and shown it against one of my own pictures taken of a store front and car in a backstreet of Bisbee; and a yard in Moscow where it looks like the house is long deserted but the ladder gives the impression that someone still lives there and accesses the upper floors via the ladder, against a back yard in Bisbee – a house that looks on first viewing to be deserted and dilapidated but the washing on the line and the “keep out” sign indicating otherwise, and on closer inspection new windows in place.




"Family, Las Vegas, New Mexico" Wim Wenders

"Backstreets, Bisbee, Arizona"









"Moscow backyard" Wim Wenders



 

"Backyard, Bisbee, Arizona"





I read an interview with Wenders on the internet (http://www.filmfreakcentral.net/notes/wwendersinterview.htm) where he talked of his love for the paintings of Edward Hopper and I can see the similarities right away. Using an example of Hopper’s painting “Early Sunday Morning 1930” straight away there is something familiar about the combination of colours and light that make me think of the “Family” photo above from Wenders.

"Early Sunday Morning 1930" Edward Hopper

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ALSO RANS – I have included some shots that I was considering for this assignment but decided that the other submissions were a better fit for the brief.



“B” for Bisbee

As with most small American towns, the letter of the town is displayed on the hill overlooking it.  When there isn’t a hill, the letter will be on a water tower or gas drum.  This picture is the starting point to give the viewer an idea of the layout of the town. I considered using this one to give “a sense of place” as a starting shot but felt that the more intimate shots of the town were more interesting.

Peace

The juxtaposition of the signs made me smile – a bright and cheery “Peace” splashed next to “Keep Out”, “No Trespassing” and padlocks and barbed wire.  There is lots of graffiti around the town and all of it bright and interesting – none of it done to vandalise.

Brewery Gulch

This area was once notorious for spit and sawdust saloons and still has the feel of somewhere I’d want to avoid on a Friday night.  This bar sits on a corner where two streets meet coming down the canyon – the height of the kerbs in Bisbee indicate the level of water that comes down from the surrounding hills that have their resilience to soak up the water depleted from the years of mining.

1000 steps

Steps up the sides of the canyon are the only way to reach some of the houses – there are no roads for cars to get to them and all shopping has to be taken up the steps.  When new houses are built, all the building materials have to get the site the same way.  There are over 1000 steps in Bisbee and every spring a race is held for people to run around all of them.  Although there are better examples of the steps in the town, this set reflected a more down at heel area.



Yellow cab

To make an uninteresting back street interesting – presumably to visitors, old cars are restored and left in situ.  I didn’t see this advertised anywhere so I, like all of those before me, felt I had made a big discovery when I came across it.  I wanted to get 2 of the vehicles in shot so took a low angle on the cab and got enough of it in to register to a viewer what they were looking at and kept the old van in sight.

 


Everyday attire

He was a distance away so I had to zoom in on him – with his flavour of the old West/hippie/artist combination.  The rest of the outfit was fairly everyday but focussing in on the hat and the hair gave him an interesting air.