"Bellingham Abandoned"

Abandoned and ransacked home in Birch Bay Washington

Ever since I was little abandoned structures have fascinated me. I relate this back to living in the Merrimack Valley of Massachusetts during the first 18 year of my life, where I remember being awestruck by the run down homes and enormous mill buildings that were built during the American Industrial Revolution lying mostly vacant. To me it was like a ghost town, where everybody one day decided to leave, not take anything and just move on. I wanted to(and still want to) explore every inch of these buildings inside and out.
I first moved to Bellingham Washington during the winter of 2005 after my seasonal employment in southeast Alaska ended. I had been to Bellingham numerous times in the past, but still had not explored much. As I do with anywhere new I move, I walked, skateboarded, road my bike or drove up and down just about every road I could find. Searching out anything of interest to my creative eye. I quickly started to see a reoccurring theme during my travels, unused dilapidated buildings, barns and houses. So I started photographing them. One here, one there unsure of what I would do with these images. It was as though I was called in, invited to share the life and death of these places and their stories somehow through photography. That was the start of my personal project "Bellingham Abandoned".