"Lost America: The Abandoned Roadside West"
A great book of photos and stories by Troy Pavia
Forward by Stan Ridgway

GHOSTS, OBSESSIONS and Synestisia

Some people can be obssevive. Artists usually are and great ones are excessively so.
In the films of Martin Scorcese, there seems to be a primary interest in examining a certain violent sub-culture in America. Does this mean the artist condones this behavior or gets a kick out of it? Not when you see the whole picture. There are always consequences for characters in Scorcess's work.

My first exposure to Troy Pavia's work was on the internet at his website LostAmerica.com. To see his photography for the first time is a shock and a revelation to the eye. I can't say I'd seen anything like it at all and the compositions of the photographs struck me immediately that these photographs were not made with an ironic wink of the eye, or a smug "look at this junk" approach. There was love in them. Lot's of love and most of all compassion. Can one be compassionate to a broken down abandoned hotel, or a rotting rusty trailer? Meet Troy Pavia.

And the colors. The painstaking approach of his "night photography". Strikingly saturated and mysteriously sensuous. The objects. All abandoned or waiting in what feels like another dimension or another time. Pavia's work gives them voice and you can hear them talk. The decay and entropy, all rendered and captured by the camera with a true romantic's vision . An obsession. And make no mistake about that. Obsessed is what artists usually are and great ones are excessively so. They simply are taken away by what they are encountering and become one with it. The more you delve into Troy Pavia's work you will see that Troy's work is like tunneling to some vast, underground cavern, filled with expansive and arcane history, objects and information on lost and ancient things, discarded, thrown away or simply abandoned by an American culture that throws away, replaces, let's rot and ignores. Things that seem to have no use anymore for its relentless march to things " brand new". To be old in America is to be soon replaced, moved out of the way to make room. Where do they go? Out to pasture so to speak. Or in front of Troy Pavia's lens, as if at a wake or a casket viewing. Or maybe just one last look before the dust takes it all back.

And If every picture tells a story, than Troy is a master storyteller with his work. And he's also an explorer. He's like A Dr. Leaky or a Joke Cousteau, a Vasco De Gama or some kind of acheologist uncovering an ancient civilsation. Our own. He goes places and takes you with him. The more you uncover, the more there is. This is not simply "trash or junk" Troy is showing us. These are objects with a life all they're own. You can hear them tell their stories from the pictures. People and events, history and death, ghosts and lingering spirits all attached and palatable.

Writing this forward I'm also struck with just how multi- layered Troy's art is. His writings here put you ridding shot gun with him across long desert stretches and roads, to lonely places filled with these ghosts. He'll takes you on a journey to explore, uncover, and ultimately discover and see with fresh eyes a "Lost America". You won't be disappointed in what you find, and you'll never look at a junkyard or even a rusty tin can along the road in quite the same way again. Ever.

Stan Ridgway / Los Angeles, CA.