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The purpose of this Blog has been to document examples of things gone wrong and things gone right with aging American mainstreets.
Boarded Up: America's Forgotten Mainstreets is a photographic journey into abandoned and derelict commercial districts of the American Midwest and Rustbelt. The purpose of this project is to document buildings and districts of architectural and historical significance in hopes that revitalization efforts will preserve these commercial centers for the benefit of the communities in which they are located.
We will juxtapose images of buildings in their current state with found historical images and provide anecdotes of the former glory of these downtowns through interviews and research. We will also document cases where preservation efforts have succeeded in saving historic commercial districts from the wrecking ball and now provide an economic amenity to the community.
The money raised will help finance a road trip to collect images, stories and documentation from the profiled communities, and pay for items such as photographic processing, permissions to reproduce images, editing and layout, and prototype printing.
The finished product will be a large format coffee table book, hardcover, with black and white and color images, with supportive narrative. This book will be at once nostalgic, haunting, and inspiring.
