Avon is an unincorporated community - really just a cluster of houses and a big cotton gin - off Highway 1 in Washington County, Mississippi. It is only 12 miles south of Greenville, and most travelers on Hwy. 1 probably rush on by. One cold December day, I had been birding and found myself in Avon. The light was soft and mellow, a roll of Ektar 25 was in my camera, and I could not resist documenting some more of the Delta.
The Maddox Grocery was closed, but it may be a worthwhile stop during a work day to sample some of the bar-b-que.
The Avon Depot looks like a railroad depot, but I did not see any evidence of old tracks here.
This drainage ditch off Riverside Road is typical of the state of infrastructure in the USA. What has happened to us?
A bit further east on Riverside Road was this closed and abandoned restaurant.
Avon Gin was a big complex of warehouses and sheds, with a lone shotgun house on their property.
A short distance south, Possum Ridge Road joins Rte. 1. A lone farm workers' house sits in a field. This photograph was at dusk, with an exposure of 1 sec. at ƒ/8.0.
I photographed this same little house in 2005 with Panatomic-X black and white film. At that time, there was a child's bicycle inside and some old signs.
The color photographs are from the long-discontinued Kodak Ektar 25 film. Mine expired in 1995, but it has been frozen all these years and seems to be fine. The Ektar 25 works especially well in soft light, drizzle, or snow, and the contrasty palette brings out colors. It was the finest-grain color negative film ever made and benefited from careful technique and top-grade lenses. I exposed it in my tripod-mounted Hasselblad 501CM camera with 80mm CB and 50mm CF lenses. I scanned the negatives in a Minolta Scan Multi medium format film scanner using SilverFast Ai software. The 2005 frames are from Kodak Panatomic-X film.
This is no. 02b of my irregular series on Abandoned Films.
