Take a drive along the country roads of Northeastern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania and you’ll see plenty of old barns.
Hundreds of them, in fact.
Some have been tended to with the utmost care and stand proudly against the wind and rain, while others are sinking sadly to the ground, their tangled timber skeletons a forlorn testament to their former greatness.
Others teeter somewhere between life and death—still standing, but looking rather shabby and ready to slide into ruin without proper and immediate care.
While driving along I notice them all–old and new, sturdy and rickety–and if I have my camera with me, you can bet I will want to stop and take a picture. I am not sure when my fascination with old barns began, but if you’re a fan of my work then you already know how much I love to photograph them.
Often it’s the oldest, most decrepit barns that intrigue me the most. Their tenacity against the elements impresses me.
They may be hanging on by a thread, but they’re still standing, by golly, and still fighting the good fight!
I can’t help but root for them, and it’s always sad when they finally succumb to the furies of Mother Nature.
When I look at these ageing barns I imagine them in their glory, filled with farmyard animals, with bales of hay and sacks of grain bulging from their spacious interiors. I imagine the sun-bronzed farmers who toiled in their sunlight and shadows, and the bustle of activity that enveloped them throughout the cycle of the agricultural seasons.
When I contemplate what they once were, these old barns seem a little bit like ghosts. They’ve seen so much in their lifetimes. If you listen carefully, it’s almost as if you can hear them whispering about the days of yore before they fell from hubs of agriculture to lonely vessels of idleness, enduring countless cycles of freeze and thaw and endless seasons of snow and rain.
Maybe I love old barns so much because I feel like each one is an old friend wanting to tell me a story.
When I was a kid I always wanted to live on a farm, and there happened to be an abandoned farm behind the house where I grew up on Pymatuning Lake Road in Andover, Ohio. This 19th-Century farm sat far off the road up on a knoll. It had a long, shady lane, an 1850s Greek Revival home and a proud, old barn with siding worn to silvery-gray. That barn watched like a sentinel over the spacious field behind the house where I lived.
Whenever I would explore this 1800s property I felt as if I had stepped into another time and as if the past was at my fingertips magically available to me through a thinly veiled portal of mystery. I loved to soak in the atmosphere there, and perhaps that’s where my fondness for farms and old barns was born. That particular old barn burned down eventually and the house was torn down, but I’ve never forgotten the rich presence of that place.
I have long been in love with the faded tales of times gone by and with history and antiques, and as a photographer I imagine I will always be drawn to capturing images of things that are old or forgotten, especially barns. I am naturally sensitive to their legacies and in awe of their stories and secrets, and I hope my images will help you appreciate them and enable them to live on after they are gone. That is one of the miracles of photography — the camera’s ability to capture for us what once was and what will never again be.
Have a great day. Go hug an old barn! 🙂
