Archive for November, 2016

The birthplace of early 20th century writer Willa Cather, this broken-down house still stands along the main highway near Gore, Virginia. The Cathers moved to a finer brick house when their daughter was still a baby. When she was nine, they moved to Nebraska, and the Great Plains was the setting for several of her novels. Some sources say the Cathers moved to the plains for better farming opportunities and to escape a tuberculous outbreak rampant in Virginia at the time. But there was a lot of bad feeling in the Gore area after the Civil War. Some families had supported the south while others sided with the north. There is speculation the Cathers left after their barn was burned.

When photographing during a recent trip to West Virginia, the sky was getting increasingly darker. I was driving to an abandoned building I wanted to photograph, not immediately aware that the light was pretty dramatic where I was right then. It took a moment before deciding to stop.