Photography and Text by Jasmin Smoots
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Heart pounding and looking over my shoulder I step carefully over the barrier rope that divides the public sidewalk I have come from and the private property I now stand on. Throwing caution to the wind and ignoring warning signs explicitly prohibiting trespassing under penalty of the law, I walk softly up the unpaved road past a broken down utilities truck and a speed boat overflowing with…junk. Abandoned goods that at one time meant something to someone now left outside for the elements to have their way with.
I come up the unpaved path, around the bend, and stumble on discarded treasures.
Never have I ever seen man and nature merge in the same manner as at a junkyard. In the junkyard, they become one. Simultaneously stuck in time yet timeless. This junkyard could be anywhere in anytime since the industrial revolution. Nothing about it, except maybe the graffiti tags from local delinquents indicate when or where I am.
The great machinery we pride ourselves on creating as a means to overpower nature is itself overpowered. Shattered glass litters the ground, falling from the windows of neglected vehicles. “Caution” and “danger” signs within the trucks now seem like warnings of the doom they did not realize was in their fate.
Abandoned and left to the elements, nature rebirths it as one of its own. Weeds grow around wheels, vines climb their way up the boom of a discarded excavator, rust rots the metal we believed was indestructible. Technology is proved insignificant. Nature has won.
Photography and Text by Jasmin Smoots, Copyright 2016.
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About The Author: Jasmin Smoots is a senior enrolled in the College of the University of Pennsylvania, Class of 2016. To read additional articles by Jasmin Smoots, go here: https://tonywardstudio.com/blog/jasmin-smoots-feeling-the-bern/