Auburn Hotel Series. Trumpian MAGA simulacrum

            This hotel was built in the 20's when Auburn was a center of the production of the fancy cars Jazz age.-Duesenburgs, Auburns, Cords. It hosts the largest antique car aution in the world. My coffee shop sits across the street and I watch people come and go. It is now a flop house, or a shooting gallery for people with addictions and de facto homeless shelter given the lack of affordable housing and no homeless shelter within 40 miles. It has not been renovated since the 1940's. People pay 100 dollars a week. One often sees families and down on their luck people carrying what they own in and out.
The town (population 13K) has decided, or rather the people who are still living off old money, to turn the town into a 1920's Disneyland simulacrum.  There are many very beautiful large houses built during the roarin' 20's.  To create this simulacrum the town has very strict zoning laws. The most disturbing is the restriction of multi-family housing to a two block area.  Low wage workers live in small towns that have been gutted of businesses and schools.  
It is hard not to see Auburn as a Harbinger or the returned of the repressed in Trump's America. I think it would be safe to say that Trump won 80% plus of the 2016 vote.
 Money has been dumped into gentrification and fancy joints to eat and drink.  Because of cost and overt dissuastion the non-affluent are not welcome.  Regular bars and places have been displaced in the name of gentrification which further segregates people.
Another very divisive issue is religion.  The town has been taken over by mega-churches which teach the prosperity gospel and whose model is that of business.  Local reality agencies regularly advertise churches that "went out of business".  These are bought by upstart religious evangelical born again Christians who want their market share or by larger churches which open franchises.  The two coffee shops are recreational and organizational spaces for these churches.  It is interesting to listen to meetings of marketing committtees discussing books discussing how to market your church to improve market share. They use all the buzzwords of corporations.  
This competition and religious clanishness leads to people only talking to people they know and often who go to their mega-church.  I have went for coffee at this coffee shop for over a year and on average 15 hours a week.  I have had a handful of short conversations with people.  I am not one of them and I don't quite look like them even though I am white.

This is related to an interesting phenomenon associated with my picture taking.  In the last year, within a 15 mile radius, I have been confronted by men wearing MAGA hats and 9mm handguns in their crotch ask "What Ya Doing?". Cops are often called and I am harassed at least one third of the time I go out to shoot.  Farmers are afraid I am a g'ment man enforcing near non-existant environmental laws concerning mega/maga farms.  Indiana has a law that you can't take pictures of agricultural properties even if standing on public property-such as a road. Indiana has no state wide Democratic elected officials and this county hasn't had a Democrat elected in I am guessing well over 50 years...maybe much longer.

The other group of people who hassle and intimidate me seem to be working class or poor people who having been whipped into a racist ferver but lack minorities to harass have to go to extreme measures to find an "Other".  So if I am taking art pictures I must be weird, liberal, gay or a pedophile as a surrogate for latinos, blacks and gays.  People yell insults or just call the police.  I have had warning shots fired from 200 yards when I was shooting in the opposite from the house. I have been instructed to raise my hands and been frisked by cops because I was taking pictures of reflections on water puddles and trees.  

Unfortunely it is too easy to see this as not only a microcosm of Trump's America but the canary in the coal mine. 
   

Taken on: April 3, 2019

Tags:

Innamoramento

manipulation

auburn

clouds

commercial

blue

weird

motel

architecture

surreal « less

Sets appears in: • dark • odd more » • Auburn: Trump's 1920's Simulacrum • auburn « less

Groups appears in: • Contemporary Landscape • Odd and Abstract more » • -Emptiness- • Weird & Wonderful The Dark Side • MOSCA - No AI • Creative Art Photography • Impressionist Photography .. • *****Conceptual Photography***** • Post Processing Addicts • Society for Commercial Archeology • Conceptual Cinematic *Pics with stories* • Post-Processing Addicts • Building A Mystery • all poets are blind • Kreative People: Manipulated Photo Art- (Please read rules) • Art Without End ... [P1/C3] • Sign of the Times (All Types of Signs) • The Totality of Reality ~*MANIPULATION GROUP* *Post 1, Award 1*~ • The Blind Pig Speakeasy • Curious Interestingness • Dreamability • Art Dreamed ¤ No Second Life Images • 29.05 « less

Camera: Canon PowerShot SX530 HS, f/5.0, 1/500 sec, 23.8mm, ISO 100 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Canon PowerShot SX530 HS
Aperture:	f/5.0
Exposure Time:	0.002 sec (1/500)
Focal Length:	23.8mm
ISO:	100
Exposure Bias:	-4/3 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	sRGB
Show full info

Stats: 6,101 views / 28 comments

go back

Link to this photo view:
Link to this photo large view: