Brook Reynolds
Ultimate
From the series Light, Sweet, Crude
2008
Pigment print
20 x 20 inches
Courtesy of the artist
© Brook Reynolds

Brook Reynolds explores that question in images in which the edge between nature and man-made remains uneasily in place. For her series Light, Sweet, Crude, Reynolds photographed abandoned gas stations, primarily in the southeastern United States, in various states of neglect. In one picture, a towering sign advertising “Ultimate” fuel is encased in a tattered shroud, perhaps symbolizing the death of post-war American car culture and the obsolescence of its ubiquitous landmark, the gas station. “Once viewed as familiar places that served a vital function,” Reynolds writes of these boarded-up way-stations, “they are now toxic sites that remain vacant because it is so difficult to clean them up.”