These are found scenes photographed in the dump in Centralia, PA. In 1962, the town lit its dump on fire (as it had done several times in the past). This time the fire spread to an open coal seam below the dump and spread to the abandoned coal mines below the town. The fire is still burning today. The government bought out and razed most of the homes in the 80′s and 90′s; today the town has approximately nine residents.

These were photographed with Polaroid 669 film, which is no longer produced. I then made emulsion lifts, carefully stretching the images out then wrinkling them to give them the feel of discarded paper. I then made high-resolution scans of the emulsion lifts and enlarged them to approximately 12×12″.