Bleached Wood Aged (2000) Painting by Mark Polege

My interest in Photography began 15 years ago shortly after entering high school. I was fortunate enough to visit many areas of the country since that time. For the next 13 years my interest in 35mm Photography mainly focused on tourist-type photos. However, when I moved to North Dakota to be near my family, my interest in it took a very unexpected turn. Having previously lived in downtown St.Louis, Missouri and then relocating to the farm country of North Dakota, a degree of culture shock was inevitable. What surprised me so much about this area was how many of the old farms there were that lie abandoned, untouched by human hands for some 20 to 30 years. Coming from a land where change was a constant forward motion of destroy and rebuild, the concept of something simply withering away was quite new to me. Walking through many of these places I felt a strong sense of what it must have been like when these farms were in their prime. Having never really been on farms much as a child, all this was foreign territory to me. Remnants of a time long past where if each object, each building, each house would have a tale to tell if only they could speak.
This strong sense of a living history, now sitting as nothing more than a skeleton, became a very special opportunity. I realized that this was a chance to try to capture a moment in time long past whose traces are quickly fading from the face of the Earth. For example, I have never seen a wooden wagon with spoke wheels except in John Wayne movies and yet I was fortunate enough to find a few of them and also to capture them on film before time and the elements destroyed them completely. I believe every moment is an opportunity to learn, an opportunity to appreciate something outside our comfort zone, and most important each opportunity is a gift. I choose to savour that moment and gift, and my photos are simply a way with which I can do that. In a single flash of light, the photo is taken and the moment is gone, but reminiscent of that moment, eternity may be found.

• Nationality: UNITED STATES
• Date of birth : unknown date
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Contemporary American Artists