The following images are part of an ongoing process of documenting small towns throughout the state of Ohio. This project stems from my interest in documenting places and structures in my hometown of Mentor, with the resulting images serving as both a personal and a historic record. Over time I have realized that I cannot remember certain structures or places from my childhood that have since been torn down and rebuilt into something new. As a result, I must respond to the limits of my human memory by searching for places which stimulate my fading visual recall and satisfy my emotional attachment to places I can no longer return to or document. I travel beyond the borders of my hometown as well, taking alternate routes to places unknown, with the hope that I might encounter structures and landscapes which have been preserved from a bygone era – such as the local mom and pop businesses that have resisted conforming to strip-mall architecture.

These towns hold distinctive properties and places which satisfy my own nostalgic desire to document places that I cannot revisit, just as they can also satisfy a national desire to preserve a visual record of landmarks which are becoming rapidly overwhelmed by contemporary architecture and property development. Within this inquiry into the past, I act as an insider and outsider, documenting my own memories and places as well as the structures of towns which I have no claim to aside from their intersection with my own memories. By creating a visual reference to my own recollections I offer a new way for others to connect with their own personal vision of place.