Locker rooms, Bishop Lynch High School, Dallas, Texas

Exhibition at Amarillo College

I have a solo exhibit coming up at Amarillo College's Southern Light Gallery, 2011 W. Washington Street in Amarillo, TX.  The show will run from January 18th to February 19th.  It is recent work from the Built Environment series, all Texas images.

Casa Linda Theater, Dallas, Texas

The Casa Linda Theater, Dallas, Texas. Once part of the McClendon chain of indoor and drive-in movie theaters, it has been closed since 1999 and it is unlikely that it will ever show movies again.

Update 12/24/10:  The theater is now scheduled to become a grocery store.  Colorado based Natural Grocers has leased the space and is expected to open in April of 2011.

Former Braniff Airline Headquarters, Love Field, Dallas, Texas

I have been passing this for years. I shot photos inside when Braniff was in business, covered the Caulder plane, the first Braniff Concord flight and flown on Braniff regularly to Mexico. 

The former Braniff International Airways headquarters at Love Field in Dallas, Texas. It spent some time as Dalfort Aerospace, but has been empty since 2003. It has a 6-bay hangar, covering 13,000 sq. m. (140,000 sq. ft.) can accommodate 6 narrow-body aircraft. Its shops, warehouses and administrative offices occupy an area of 33,445 sq. m. (360,000 sq. ft). Tom Braniff's airline opened up air travel to Latin America and commissioned Alexander Caulder paint one of their planes in the 1973. (A model of that plane now sits in the Frontiers of Flight Museum also located at Love Field.)

Heat and Control Building, Flower Mound, Texas

Sometimes the best images are the last of the day, the less obvious becomes obvious, and the eye discovers what was always there.  (Heat and Control Building, Flower Mound, TX, for Blackbird Studio Architects)

Chapel in Lewisville, Texas

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Infrastructure

New construction over Loop 12, Irving, Texas

After the Demolition

The former site of Texas Stadium in Irving, Texas.  The stadium was demolished after the Dallas Cowboys moved to Arlington this season.  I photographed this site a year ago before the the stadium was imploded.(link)

Dallas from the Parking Garage

I have been looking at the city from the parking garage when I arrive to teach at the UCD for Texas A&M-Commerce. Last Thursday I finally made some photographs from there while I sent my class out to shoot the city at night.  Billboard style advertising, acres of asphalt and concrete, and the flat North Texas landscape beyond the city center.
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Somewhere along US 69 in Oklahoma on the way back from the Society for Photographic Education South Central Conference at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. image link

Agrophilia

Recently, I have been rereading J.B. Jackson. In his Discovering the Vernacular Landscape there is a short chapter titled “Agrophilia, or the Love of Horizontal Places” I am seeing some of the things I have been looking at with a camera.  In it he talks about change in the landscape, how aspects of the rural and urban landscapes become obsolete. He says that there is a “culture of environmental change, a pattern of decisions worth exploring” and that he American landscape is a horizontal one, one that is different than the European.

New Work

I am continuing to look at the flat, open spaces around North Texas, particularly vacant lots and what is adjacent to them. These near the intersection of the LBJ Freeway and I35. 

Looking at the Landscape Over Time

I am preparing an image maker presentation for the Society for Photographic Education South Central Regional Conference in October titled "Don't Lose Your Way". The black and white image above will be the first in the Keynote slide show, one that I made as an undergraduate at Ohio University.  I had hitchhiked to Cincinnati where I saw this expanse of asphalt and the row of older Ohio industrial city style homes at the top of the frame. The thing is, I am still looking at these things today. I have returned to look at the landscape in much the same way I did then, I have found my way back.  The image below was made last year in downtown Dallas, a parking lot with the W Hotel, high rise condos and four story apartments that surround the American Airlines Center.

The End of Kodachrome

Leicas and Kodachrome:  Kodak has stopped manufacturing the iconic film after 75 years and the last Kodachrome lab, located in Kansas, will shut down at the end of the year.  I shot thousands of rolls of Kodachrome both for personal work and while on assignment.  It was my favorite tool for color work, but today I don't really miss it. Digital capture provides me more control and flexibility, particularly when working on location. But there was something about looking at those slides on the light box.

More on the End of Kodachrome  here  and  here

(images: Wurlitzer jukebox from the Hard Rock Cafe collection, San Juan de Dios Market in Guadalajara, Dairy farmer near Big Sandy, Texas)

Architecture

Architecture in Black and White - Images by Peter Calvin

The Fourth of July in Texas

Something for the Fourth of July: a fireworks stand on I30 between Dallas and Commerce, Texas. 

The closed Mission Four Outdoor Theatre, Roosevelt Ave., San Antonio, Texas

Diners

Dallas, Texas

Guthrie, Kentucky

The Style Station

One of the most neglected photographic accessories is the brake pedal on your car. I have been passing the Style Station on Interstate 35 south of Dallas for a couple of years and finally stopped to make a photograph. They sell vintage clothing and seem to collect Toyota minivans from the 80's.

Mission San Jose, San Antonio, Texas

Mission San Jose, San Antonio, Texas, restored in the 1930s as a WPA project and monetized in the present.

DART Light Rail

As a continuation of my exploration of the built environment, I have been photographing the DART (Dallas Area Rapid Transit) light rail construction and thinking about the possible changes in the landscape around it. The image here runs parallel to the existing highways, bypassing businesses and dividing the landscape it runs through. Businesses will close, others will open and how society interacts with the landscape will be altered.

There is a history of transportation changes altering communities. A a string of towns runs between Shreveport, LA. and Dallas, Texas that were railroad town in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  The  automobile and US Highway 80 changed that, and eventually many of these towns were bypassed all together by the interstate highway a few miles from the town centers. In Dallas, the demise of the trolly system closed businesses and even churches, who depended on public transit and had no parking facilities.  link to images

Signs of the Economy

42 acres at the corner of Walnut Hill and US 75, Central Expressway in Dallas, Texas.  A large apartment complex was demolished to make room for an ambitious mixed-use, high end development. The land has been taken back by the lenders and they are trying to sell it to recover the more than $40 million they have invested in it.  link to image

Main St. Theater in Nacogdoches, TX

Here is another of these closed cinemas, this one in Nacogdoches, Texas. It is for lease and next door to a thrift shop.  link to image

The Tyler Theater

I have been photographing old movie theaters. My interest in them comes from Saturday mornings in downtown Youngstown, Ohio, and the 400-500 seat, single screen neighborhood theaters that are mostly gone in Dallas. (The Esquire, Delman, Wilshire, Granada, etc) The theater in this image is in Tyler, Texas, just off the square. It exists as only the facade, the interior is gone. link to image

Images in Texas Architect

Texas Architect has published images I made of the Watermark Community Church for Omniplan in a portfolio of religious facilities. (page 66 of the March/April 2010 issue) You can see more work from the project here: http://www.petercalvin.com/archtecture.html

Executive Fitness in Dallas

Hart's Military Training, US 75, North Central Expressway, Dallas, TX.

Possible keywords: executive training, corporate culture, militarism, competitiveness, machismo, football culture, butch, capitalism
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