“Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.” is a phrase attributed to Nathanial Hawthorn, a great American Novelist best known for “The Scarlet Letter.” While my project does not include red letters, it centers around time. More importantly, it focuses on things time has forgotten. My project is about the shadows left behind. The mystery of the beautiful places, once bustling to the brim with life, but now they’re just a shell of what they used to be. Left to the elements, it looks as if the people decided that one day they would never return. The stories of these places are lost in the memory of, left with the people who are now long gone. Time has forgotten them, but shadows remain.
   
  I have always been in love with stories and playing pretend. I would spend hours in the yard growing up, imagining different worlds and people in my head. Living in the countryside of North Alabama, we would always pass by old barns and houses, and I would always imagine what it must have been like for the people there. When we moved to Huntsville, Alabama, and I found out about the mills that once littered the city, it always piqued my curiosity, and I loved to drive by the old houses in the neighborhoods surrounding them. Thus my love of old and mysterious places has been a childhood wonder that evolved into adult curiosity. I crave to know the stories, the people, how they lived, what they did, and who they were. With my photos, by exploring the areas I live in now, such as Opelika and Valley Alabama, I’m getting a slight glimpse into a world that is almost forgotten, and maybe through my photos, I can bring it back.
 

My photos are a series that includes old abandoned sheds, chimneys, mills, and bridges that are no longer in use or have been converted but hold a lot of history to them. I wanted to capture the uniqueness of these abandoned places to remind people that time is fleeting, not permanent, and that what remains is a shadow of the former life lived when we’re gone.