Old Fort Ord
Work Zone
From 1917 to 1994 Fort Ord was a U. S. Army base. It trained horse cavalry, mechanized artillery, & basic training through all the wars & peacetimes of those years, housing as many as 50,000 personnel.
Then in 1994 the Army moved out and all the barracks, motor pools, offices, churches, movie theaters, a prison, and training structures were left neglected & decaying.
All this infrastructure became a canvas, movie set & playground for many, including me.
Among them were the students from the high school where I taught photography & video, which is adjacent to the old fort. I have adopted their name for it: "The Abandos".
Graffiti is an ancient vernacular art. Like all expression there is the surface level of the content, the words and images, which connect to the subliminal messages which include the medium itself.
It is a raw blurt revealing a fundamental human urge. It is to make one's mark, to have one's say. To leave something from out of our mind.
New structures are built to begin their journey toward decay.
