It has frequently been something of note to me how a person's soul will experience seasons, like the world around it. They will not necessarily correspond, but the effects can be the same in a metaphorical sense. The winter of 2011 was one of those times for me and I definitely felt it on a deeper level.

It was a time when I wanted little more than to shut myself into my apartment while the ice dug its fingers into the ground outside. Artistic inspiration and motivation were very hard for me to come by. I remember forcing myself to venture out with my camera during the famous snow storm of Atlanta, trying desperately to see and capture a decent image, only to come back with nothing. It was very frustrating.

Towards the end of winter, during one of the first warm fronts of the year, I was visiting family in my hometown. I had my camera with me and while driving around, we stumbled upon an abandoned and crumbling old mill. My hometown is an old textile town; the mills are not uncommon, but I was immediately intrigued by this particular one, and even though it was surrounded by barbed wire and signs warning against trespassing, I set out to find a way in.

It was in ruins and had suffered from a fair amount of vandalism, but time had allowed nature to come in and reclaim its place there. Amidst the broken brick and shattered glass, life sprang up through the cracks everywhere, demanding to be. Birds had made their homes in the rafters - their wings fluttered above me as I began to explore and snap my shutter, open-mouthed in awe. Layers of oil and smoke and moss had collided into amazing displays of color on the brick. Rust had waged war on the paint of every surface and the peeling away revealed its secret love affair with the elements around it. What I found there was a magical place, left there to be completely affected by time, yet somehow outside of temporal constraints as well. It flirted with my camera and teased my senses out of their winter hiding place.

My visits there allowed me to reconnect with myself and hear my own voice a little more clearly during a poignant time in life. There with the rubble and decay, I felt the inherent sense of resilience and determination around me. Nature refuses to be denied and that same steadfastness can be found in us as well. Life brings turmoil and heartache, but our desire to live, and live wholly, can supersede all else. We fall down, but we pick ourselves back up. We make mistakes, but we can learn from them too.

We build walls around ourselves, but we can also break them down.

Vanessa Prestage - 2011

I come from a small southern town that serves as the halfway point between Macon and Atlanta.  It was built up around cotton mills and train tracks and is not unlike other towns across America, having small populations and considerable distances between them and the big city.  

There isn’t much in the way of opportunity there.  Since the town's incorporation in 1843 and throughout the Industrial Revolution, the mills were arguably one of the only sources of a solid income for many.  And then in the late 1990’s when industrial work started going overseas, the mills began shutting down one by one.  Men who had worked loyally in the mills their whole lives were suddenly out of a livelihood, and with limited skills, many had little hope of finding one elsewhere.  Time has proved that some never did. 

My family were not employed by the mills, so I was largely unaware of this facet of my hometown’s history until around 2009.  I was home visiting family and had gone out for a drive with my camera.  Curiosity led me to a part of town where mills dot the railroad tracks and sit in varying stages of dilapidation.  I came to one built mainly of brick and blue and green glass; massive and imposing yet possessing a strange beauty and mystery despite — and perhaps, because of — the poverty and disregard around it.  I wanted to go inside, to learn its secrets and photograph its strange beauty.  I took down the phone number from a sign posted on the fence surrounding the building.  

After six months of unanswered phone calls, I found myself back at the front gate.  This time, I met a man named Ronnie Stonica.  He is a man I’ve come to know, not only as a friend, but as the spirit and embodiment of the Thomaston Mill. 

Ronnie was born in the parking lot.  As a boy, he was frequently seen bringing lunch to his father Bill, who worked at the mill for 45 years.  He himself began his work there at 16, and even when the mill closed down, he was kept on as the sole caretaker of the sprawling buildings.  Ownership has changed hands more than once since then, but Ronnie has remained.  He cuts the grass around the 22-acre property and stops neighborhood thieves from stealing copper out of neglected machines.  But everything else remains as it was the day the news came down of the closing, and the time cards were punched for the last time. 

Ronnie is a good man.  The type of man, who takes in stray neighborhood dogs, so that they aren’t poisoned by the cruel people down the road.  The type of man, who turns one of the old administrative offices into a safe and comfortable place to live for a woman left homeless by an abusive, alcoholic husband.  And he is the type of man who lets a girl who left for the big city come and take pictures whenever she likes, not realizing that what she experiences in those damp and rusty corners is transformative for her, even healing and vital. 

In the beginning, I wanted to tell the story of the workers who lost their jobs, realizing that it mirrored the story of thousands of people across this country in these times.  But, the series has taken a different course.  I wonder that Ronnie has remained  unscathed - for the most part - by the strife all around him.  I think this is testament to his heart and the man that he is.  

It is Ronnie's story that I want to tell, and his story that I want to honor with my series from the Thomaston Mill.