The Abandoned Island
2005 - 2009

I see a landscape transforming, and upon each visit a familiar yet distant memory in before me. In the calmness of the Island of Maui, throughout the land are reminiscence of humans in an eternal struggle to co-exist.

The Abandoned Island project first started in 2005, when I first visited the island and came across in field covered in cars. It looked as if they had fallen from the sky, the abandoned vehicles seemed random, and amongst the rich vegiation, out-of-place.

Each visit, exactly two years apart, I'd document and redocument specific locations, to take note of the progress of nature or the progress of community. The county uses a system of identifying each abandoned vehicle, labelling them with orange stickers before waiting to see if they had made any progress. Two weeks later, if the cars hadn't been moved, they would be towed to a central holding lot, where they'll wait even longer. During this time if the vehicle's owners are identified they'd be told where to find they're vehicle, charged for the towing and storage, and the vehicle would be returned to them, or sold for scrap. Almost half of the cars will remain unclaimed, "abandoned", and will either be sold through police auction or be processed as strap metal. The county of Maui has taken steps to rendering these vehicles in an environmental sound matter (in 2005 a strap metal plant had been shut-down due to not meeting the county's standards, which in turn the county had seen an influx of abandoned vehicles) containing toxic fluids before compressing the vehicles into rectangle blocks. Later these blocks are shipped to China for further rendering, shipment happens every two weeks.

Hovering in the balance between the world of man, and the realm of the natural, I can't help but let my mind wonder off. I close my eyes and what is before me isn't a ruin, nor something forgotten, it is a faint idea of the paradise lost.