There’s something intrinsically post-apocalyptic about imagery that focuses on the discarded, abandoned, or transitory. Be they depictions of things from ages gone by, physical manifestations of decay or decomposition, or simply items or places that are generally overlooked in today’s fast-lane stampede of life, there radiates from them a certain loneliness. As such things become slowly outdated, forgotten or irrelevant, do they begin to fade away like an ancient god whose worshippers have deserted him for avatars of the more modern or practical?
This month, libraries on both sides of the Connecticut River feature photographs of just such marginalia. At Northampton’s Forbes Library, David Maxwell’s American Roadside Lifestyle Artifacts exhibit reflects a study of roadside things, transitory realities and paeans to the quickly-forgotten. At Amherst’s Jones Library, photographer Paul Yandoli displays color and black and white images in his photo exhibit Past Present—Beauty in Decline and Decay, which focuses on old structures, rusting signs and surfaces, and nature in the waning seasons of autumn and winter.
Maxwell: Through June 29, Hosmer Gallery, Forbes Library, 20 West St., Northampton, (413) 587-1013, www.forbeslibrary.org.
Yandoli: Through May 30, Burnett Gallery, Jones Library, 43 Amity St., Amherst, (413) 259-3090, www.joneslibrary.org.