Over the weekend Audrey and I went to Historic Fort Wayne to walk around. There were maybe five other people there, which was great. It was easy to stay far away from everyone.
I think Fort Wayne might be Audrey’s favorite place in the city. It is a really interesting place that doesn’t get much attention. The main fort was closed, so we couldn’t walk around the in the cool tunnel/fort, but the grounds were open. There are many other structures on the grounds, old barracks, an old theater, hospital and other assorted abandoned military buildings. Most of it is in pretty terrible shape and many of the buildings are completely falling apart. It is a great place to take photos.
While we were walking around I shot a roll and a half of film through my Olympus PEN FT. The half roll was some Kodak Gold 200 which I haven’t developed yet. The whole roll was some black and white Ultrafine Extreme 100, a 100 ASA film. A few weeks back I bought a 100’ roll of it to bulk load. For the last year or so I’ve been shooting mostly 400 speed Arista EDU film, which is pretty heavy on the grain. The PEN is already a pretty grainy camera, because the negative is so small. I also usually develop in Rodinal which is a fairly grainy developer. So , I thought for my next batch of film it might be nice to try something with finer grain. I also switched to a slightly finer grain developer, Kodak D76, for this roll. These shots are a smoother than what I’m used to seeing with Arista EDU 400. I also metered a little differently than I typically do, overexposing by a stop or so to try to get more detail in the shadows. I’ve got over a dozen more rolls of Ultra Fine Extreme 100 in my film fridge, so I’ve got plenty to experiment with.
Detroit is a city filled with abandoned, falling down buildings. They can be very beautiful. But, I have an ethical problem with suburbanites, like myself, coming into town and photographing the “ruins.” It feels like exploitation. Anyone who comes to town, photographs a bunch of abandoned structures, and then goes home and does not have to face the day-to-day realities of those buildings and the circumstances and systems that created them seems to be on some ethically rocky ground. They aren’t tourist attractions. But, the structures on the grounds of Fort Wayne weren’t private residences or businesses, they are military government buildings on government land. They are literally a tourist attraction. They are military ruins, I felt ok I photographing them.
Anyhow this is only the second place we have gone during the entire pandemic. It was nice to go somewhere, almost like things were normal. Almost.
