Fort Ord Beauty

I’m just finishing up my week up in Monterey, California, helping radio station KAZU-FM with their Fall Pledge Drive. The radio station is located on the Cal State University Monterey Bay Campus, which is itself located on abandoned Fort Ord, a military base the size of San Francisco.

While I have been to the fort before, spending this week working and sleeping on the grounds has furthered my appreciation of its austere beauty and inspired a photography session of my own as well as hours of flickr exploration. I wanted to post a photo from flickr user Wizmo, as well as a link to hisher Fort Ord Favorites.

Wizmo, on why he she photographs the spaces he she chooses to shoot “I’ve had a thing for old buildings since I first started photographing at the age of 16, which would have been 1968. I used to go to Venice, California, and photograph all the run down places there when I was still in high school. There’s something vaguely romantic and mysterious about places that were once new and in the midst of human activity, now that they have been used up. They start to lose the scent of humans, their garish colors become more subtle as they fade, their textures more interesting. Nature once again makes her imprint and they begin to break down into their base elements. I like the sense of dignity and silence I find in them.

Old places often retain a reminder of their former selves, and all the people who once occupied them and used them, and they serve as a momento mori. We shall become them all too soon. “