I talked to Sam Pathi, who considers himself more of an artist than a photographer, and asked him about his works. Since Pathi's hearing is going away with his age, his wife was the one who'd tell him what I was saying when the music from Old Main's lawn was too loud. Even when Pathi could hear me though, he gave off a strong aura of not having a care about what I was saying, or what others around him thought. Honestly though, I find politically incorrect tired old people kind of endearing and hilarious, so I tried to make the questions interesting enough that he'd stay interested. A little backstory on Pathi, he photographs using a 4x5 film camera, prints the photos out onto linen canvases, and frames the photos, all on his own. For the past 46 years he's traveled around Europe and the US, primarily photographing the wilderness and architecture, but keeping his eye out for anything of a simplistic beauty. Many of Pathi's photos are filled with vibrant colors that leap off the canvases, drawing onlookers over to his stand set up by the obelisk. Personally, I was drawn to the stand by his photo of a backwoods road during the fall, but when I got closer and saw the picture of the abandoned church I knew it was what I was looking for.
According to Pathi and his wife, the church was located in Salisbury, MD, and was destroyed just after the photo was taken 15 years ago. While he was on the east coast of Maryland, he saw 2 tractors heading down the road and asked them where they were off to. They told him about the abandoned church they were off to tear down, and he decided it'd be worth the effort to go out there and get one last photo of the place. It ended up being his all time best selling piece with the original print auctioning off for over a million dollars. That's worth more than the church itself was.
What I liked the most about the photo is how many different messages the image holds. For some it could represent religious fortitude, whereas for others it could symbolize the need to move on from old beliefs. Personally, I like to see it as a haunting scene that was originally a place of happiness and light. Now, seeing it in a state of decay and left to rot, it becomes something much more sinister. Overall real neat photo.
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