Celine Downen - Motel - 7 x 7 on 8 x 8 - NFS

Celine Downen celinedownen.smugmug.com My current series focuses on the ever-changing built environment. It started with the unearthing of some old negatives of Bill and Nada’s Café, a classic greasy-spoon diner in Salt Lake that was demolished after Bill’s death in 1999. Standing on the empty lot that once held my favorite 2am-on-Saturday-morning-after-a-night-out spot, I was inspired to begin preserving these places the only way I could, through the lens of my camera. Through photography I’ve found a way to document our disappearing cultural landscape. I’ve spent the last several years chronicling old drive-in movie theatres, motel signs, and other commercial and cultural artifacts of an earlier era that linger in the corners of our modern world. Dorothea Lange once said, “Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.” This is my vision of the artifacts of yesterday, captured and preserved so they may always be here today.