Steven Godfrey

Profile

From the very early days of my photography career, I’ve done experimental work. My first forays were multiple image black & white prints. Essentially, they were special effects prints using several negatives to produce a surreal effect.

I first learned the Polaroid transfer process, while I was in college for photography at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh (1992-94). The process allows me to print a color Polaroid image onto watercolor paper. While in college I began doing urban exploration. Pittsburgh, at that time, still had a tremendous number of derelict steel mills and other industrial buildings. The presence of these buildings is one of the main reasons that I chose a school in Pittsburgh.

After college I developed a taste for roadside architecture and discovered that the Polaroid processes lent themselves very well to these subjects as well. Not long after, I began work exclusively with Polaroids to document both the industrial and roadside architecture in addition to experimenting with other subject matter or settings. About that same time I acquired an SX-70 Polaroid camera and experimented with the Time Zero film that that camera takes. The properties of the Time Zero film allow me to create images reminiscent of the Impressionist school of painting.

When a building is abandoned, forgotten, or simply left to its own devices by its owners, then it acquires something of an other worldly quality. It’s a creation of man that’s in the process of reverting back to nature. An ‘in-between’ place as it were. The structure develops a life of its own.

Much of the last decade or so of my life has been spent catching this particular moment in the ‘lives’ of these places. Places that most people never notice, or if they do it’s with a degree of distaste. My perceptions have radically altered by over a decade’s worth of rust, moss, and decaying wood & stone. I have found beauty and elegance in places that others would usually rather avoid.

Many of the buildings that I document have become like old friends, changing as the years roll on. I return when I can to see how they’ve changed and capture those changes. Sometimes the building has been refurbished, thus gaining a new life and purpose. While this usually renders them unsuitable for my work, it’s nice to know that someone loved the building enough to save it. Other structures aren’t so lucky; they become the victims of the wrecking ball, fires, or vandalism…leaving them to exist only in my images and the memories of others like me.

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