It may not be a great book. Glenn Morris may not be an accomplished writer or a professional photographer This is a book that moved me, left its mark.
It may not be a great book. Glenn Morris may not be an accomplished writer or a professional photographer. But the places he describes linger in imagination, his photos summon forth a mood.
Morris takes his photographs often at dusk, at isolated moments, probably after his day job. These photographs bear witness to how little is left: a one room schoolhouse used as a shed, a cemetery no longer visited, the castle-like walls of a ruined grist mill, four stone steps going nowhere.
It is a straight-foward book. Glenn Morris is a specialist in what they call ghost towns: names on old maps but now nothing but names, tiny towns harboring railroad stations unvisited, shuttered inns, silent mills, abandoned mines.
Morris tells little stories too: of Sewellsville, originally called Union, whose wandering settlers were once refreshed by a cold water spring; of Higginsport, that boasted seventeen tobacco shops, but died when it couldn’t attract a railroad; of Vinton Furnace, home to Belgium-made coke ovens that did not work well, ovens that brought the town down; of New Hope, that started well, with a wool mill, and a saloon, but ended up too far from the canal.
Abandoned Ohio: Ghost Towns, Cemeteries, Schools, and More is a plain book with a simple purpose: to keep alive in all of our minds the humblest of empty places. It may not be art, but it lingers in the memory. Like an old cemetery at dusk. Like four stone steps going nowhere....more
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