footprints.” His photos show the beauty of the out of mind,
we as people living in a society that is ever-changing, the
have forgotten. Our country, as he told me, is very prosperous and productive. As we progress and knock down
buildings to build new ones to keep going and going, it
behooves us at the expense of progress; we erase our
own culture. Through his travels and exploring, Acey
brings these places back to life, he puts them back out
into the world for people to remember them; to not let
our past culture be erased.
But what really did it? What started his process?
It was while traveling on the road with Joan Jett.
The good ol’ hurry up and wait of rock and roll.
Get there, get everything set and then there’s the
hours to kill until the lights go on.
In his downtime, Acey would and still does go on
walks. It was then, in seeing these abandoned
buildings and the character instilled in decay,
the decrepitness peaked his interest and it
was then he knew he needed to capture it on
film.
He has shot and explored the old asylums
of the northeast, built by the number one
architects of that era, now crumbling. To
the middle of nowhere on the Nevada/
Utah state line which held an abandoned aircraft field used in WW2 where
the preliminary bombs were tested for
Nagasaki, which eventually won the war,
now again left to go to rot. In his book,
the photo of the rusted sink is from just
that spot. Again, while rusting away
it may be, it’s not forgotten and has
been brought into the 21st century.
He was in the middle of nowhere
and had nothing to do, and here is
where he found treasure and from
there his hunt was on and strong.
When I asked Acey what his
favorite shot was in his book,
he told me it was the one of the
American flag. The flag was
from a town in Pennsylvania
where Acey was born, where
it all originally began in a
sense. The flag featured was
from the paper mill that his
father worked in when he
was born. Acey knew the
mill had been closed and
forgotten for some time,
but upon going back
home between tours
and acquiring his first
new camera, he had to
check it out. It was one
of those shots where
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