Features Pets & Jewels Promotion Materials That Really Work Planning: The Root of all Succes Abandoned America Columns Insight/On the Cover Digital Photography Departments Industry News Problems and Solutions New Products Archives

Rangefinder Magazine
March 2003

Abandoned America by Lou Jacobs Jr.
Seeker of Abandoned America

Photographed in 1999 in Maine, and used as the book’s cover photo. People ask if Steve painted the sign on the door, and he didn’t. Nor did he put the bullet hole in the window.

Steve Gottlieb grew up in a photographic family. His father, Bill Gottlieb, was a professional photographer, as well as a writer, and, Steve says, “For the first 14 years of my life I was maybe the most photographed child in America. Among other things, I was on the cover of five of my dad’s children’s books.” (Steve’s dad is best known for photographs of jazz musicians taken from 1939 to 1949, published in his 1979 book about the golden age of jazz.) At 12 or 13 Steve started learning the rudiments of photography, and says, “Today, my early images look too ‘arty’ to me.”

Though photography was probably in his genes, Steve didn’t want to join his father’s business, so he attended Columbia University Law School. He recalls, “I didn’t like practicing law very much, but I kept trying to give it a chance to justify all the time and money that was spent on my education. Eventually, I practiced in two large law firms, first on Wall Street and later in Washington, D.C. and I also worked for the Federal government.” In his last position, with a government corporation, he ran public hearings across the United States and testified before Congressional committees. But photography wasn’t forgotten and during his extensive business travels he embarked on shooting roadside relics and other Americana.

At Wupatki National Monument in Arizona , after sunset a full moon spotlights Anasazi Indian dwellings, silent testimonial to its advanced-culture builders that vanished over 600 years ago.

“I realized I was taking photography more seriously,” Steve explains, “and I started hanging out with photographers in Washington, D.C. Though my legal job was full time, shooting in my spare time was clearly quite important, and I built up a sizeable selection of Washington, D.C. images. I daydreamed about a book coming from this work, and my vague visions became something concrete in 1984.

“For a long time I had realized that I wanted a new career that was more than a job, but something I felt a real passion for. My aspirations were not a specific field and friends told me I was naive to think there was a perfect career out there for me. Calling a lawyer naive is equivalent to calling a painter colorblind. I was convinced that my Washington pictures would make a wonderful coffee-table book, so I took a batch of them to a publisher at Acropolis Books. He loved the photographs and probably felt the book would make a statement about his position as a Washington publisher. With a lot of self-confidence in 1985 he decided to publish Washington: Portrait of a City without consulting his marketing people. It was years before I realized just how extraordinarily lucky I was to find a publisher so easily.

	“An irresistible subject,” found in Kansas. Steve identifies the vehicle as a 1927 Henney motor car that was once used as a hearse, but was later converted to a pickup.

“Though I felt pride that I’d be a lawyer with a picture book to my credit, a photographic career didn’t enter my mind. I couldn’t imagine making a living with a camera.” A promotional piece in advance of the book’s publication led Steve to a weekend assignment from a graphic designer who insisted on paying him $500 a day, though he only asked $300. “That was my moment of revelation,” he states. “Being paid for doing what I love seemed amazing. After sleeping for a few nights on the idea of a dramatic career change, I decided to go ahead with it. So on the day the Washington book was published I gave the chairman of my corporation a copy, and resigned my job. After those 10 years as an attorney, I’ve never done another minute of legal work, unless it related to my own photography.”

The D.C. book led to a gallery exhibit and sales of stock images. After the book’s second printing sold out, the publisher retired and the company folded. However, another publisher, Roberts Rinehart, will reissue the book in October 2003, revised with 50 percent new pictures taken since Steve became a pro. In addition, an exhibit featuring Steve’s Washington photographs has been on display for over 10 years in the National Building Museum, just off the Mall in our nation’s capitol.

	In the abandoned home in Silver Plume, CO Steve speculated about its original ambiance compared to a relic open to blowing snow, now becoming a fine art subject.

At first Steve’s office was in his home basement. He had little business knowledge and only one client so he took whatever jobs came along other than weddings and events. He got a break when a friend started a magazine called American Politics and assigned Steve to photograph political people in a sphere where he felt very comfortable. His subjects included Senator Dole, President Reagan and Gorbachev, Congressmen, governors and others in the D.C. cast of characters. But American Politics didn’t last long, and Steve began to focus on commercial work, specializing in people and architecture. He’s since expanded to annual reports and photo essays for magazines such as Smithsonian. His assignments varied from executive portraits to real people candids, from simple buildings to the most complex architecture. A night shot of the New York Stock Exchange for Allianz Corporation required four lighting assistants, unusual for a guy who often worked alone.

In Asbury Park, NJ, from the old Paramount dance hall veranda, the ocean appears like a trompe l’oeil in reverse—something real that looks like a painting.

In Steve’s view, “I got tremendous satisfaction from the Washington book. I shot the pictures, wrote and edited the text and did the book design. But it took quite a while before I came up with another book idea that excited me. American Icons is its title and my concept was to capture every major symbol in the U.S. With Washington icons already in my files, I eventually photographed another hundred, working eight weeks a year for about 10 years.” Icons, first published in 2001, will be reprinted in paperback in March 2003. It includes, by coincidence, three images of the World Trade Center plus images of the Grand Canyon, a sheriff, a lunch counter that figured in the Civil Rights movement, a San Francisco cable car, the U.S. Capitol and a group picture that replicates a famous Norman Rockwell painting.

American Icons was followed by Abandoned America, published in November 2002 by Sleeping Bear Press in Michigan. Steve observes, “About five years ago an ad agency art director visiting my studio came across my collected slides of abandoned objects and remarked, ‘These are wonderful images. Why don’t you do a whole book on this theme?’ He even suggested the title. I was captivated by the idea and eventually photographed in all 50 states. The project was a big investment, but I kept the faith that I’d find a publisher.

“At first I avoided pondering my motivation. I didn’t want to jinx the visual with the cerebral. But as I chose pictures and wrote captions, I decided that each abandoned object serves as a magic carpet to a different historical time and place. I imagined myself in a drive-in theater, circa 1966, or in a paper mill, or in the engineer’s seat of a caboose in the 1940s.

On Roosevelt Island, adjacent to Manhattan, the shell of a psychiatric hospital has stood its ground for decades. Shot from a helicopter.

“The book is an exhibit of images such as gold mining towns, plantations, stagecoaches and cars, ferryboats, churches and factories, small town facades and rustic country sides. Pictures were taken across every climate and season. The treasures I photographed, sometimes close-up, were forlorn objects that kindled my imagination, but evocative photogenic subject matter is not all that common. I was led to some wonderful material by people who understood my interests, because I might never have stumbled on some remote locations. My travels did include a large number of wrong turns, dead ends and assorted annoyances; some days yielded not a single good photograph.”

Despite such setbacks Steve believes that “a dedicated and persevering sleuth” can find excellent abandoned material almost everywhere. I agree because I’ve been shooting “beautiful junk” for decades, and he and I are in agreement that the forms and designs of many relics are appealing. When they’re confusing there’s just no pictorial poetry to them.

Abandoned America has five sections: Houses & Barns, Factories & Equipment, Vehicles, Signs & Facades, and Kaleidoscope. The latter is a smorgasbord. Each pictures is graced with a short text Steve wrote that is informative, nostalgic or inquisitive about the people that may once have been there.

	This drawbridge in Providence, RI was so well preserved that Steve had the “unnerving sensation” that it might suddenly be lowered for an oncoming train.

Some photographs in the book are full page or larger, and the layouts, which Steve did in collaboration with the publisher’s in-house designer, are elegant. Here are some of my favorite images: A crumbling home with lovely trees; a vintage barn door with a Model T showing through a hole; an aged bathroom; a wonderful period stove in a ruined kitchen; the facade of a deteriorated cotton mill; a new factory framing an ancient steel mill; the fascinating shambles of an Idaho mine shaft; an empty panoramic former Packard factory; a rusty truck cab overgrown with weeds (on the book’s cover, too); the decorative rear end of an ancient school bus; a painted brick wall featuring Coca Cola at 5 cents; and an array of intriguing amusement park leftovers. The book has 175 pages and a cover price of $34.95.

Most of Abandoned America was shot with Nikon cameras and lenses among which Steve favors the 20–35mm and the 80–200mm zooms. He also uses a Mamiya 645 and a Widelux 35mm for panoramic views. “I’ve relied on Kodak film since the beginning of time,” he says, and currently favors Ektachrome 100S and 100SW. The photographs were scanned into Steve’s computer, and adjustments were made as needed with Adobe Photoshop.

“Doing books has been the most satisfying thing in my career,” Steve observes, “but they can be a crapshoot because finding a publisher is difficult. Then you never know whether a book will sell enough to even cover the costs of creating the pictures.” Fortunately, Steve’s experiences have turned out well, and he is presently formulating plans for yet another book on an Americana theme.

In Johnson City, TN Steve asked the man “with the face of a prophet” to pose by a 1930s warehouse wall. Model and photographer spent the day together scouting more locations.

Steve Gottlieb has two sons. Jason, the younger one, “is a visually brilliant young man,” Steve says, “who gives me subtle, thoughtful and honest feedback on my work. He helped me with the Photoshop work and layout for two of my books.” Son Brian, who assisted Steve on much of his Abandoned America efforts, “is a natural writer, smooth and penetrating.” It seems evident that Steve’s creativity has been contagious. Recently, 18 years after switching careers and working in New York City and D.C., Steve moved to Portsmouth, NH. “I was ready for the pleasures of a wonderful small town,” he told me, and adds that the people and landscapes are all wonderful.

Note: A feature on Abandoned America appears on a Kodak web site: http://projects.lookandfeel.com/kodak/site.

Lou Jacobs Jr. is the author of 25 how-to photography books, the latest of which, PHOTOGRAPHER’S LIGHTING HANDBOOK (Amherst Media) was recently published. He has taught at UCLA and Brooks, is a longtime member of ASMP, and enjoys shooting stock during his travels in the U.S. and abroad.