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Projects - Ghost Town (2014-2016)


Two Cities	By Dave Hogan

by Dave Hogan

"Two Cities" got an honorable mention at the 2015 Underfunded Film Festival in Provo.

"Two Cities" was produced specifically for the Ghost Town project. I chose to do a film instead of a photo study (as I had done for Thistle) because the moving image would allow me to juxtapose and overlap images of Park City's past and present - much as one experiences when visiting the area. Many mountain and ski resorts project a bogus, manufactured image of the "old west". I call it "spray quaint". Park City maintains a genuine sense of its history. Mining relics are not only preserved but incorporated into the modern developments. The historic area of Main Street is just that - historic. Many of the buildings have been re-purposed, but they are genuine late 19th and early 20th century structures. One shot in the film is a cross dissolve from a hundred year old photo of Main Street to the present day. In this shot, I was able to line up my footage with the century old image with great accuracy - especially on the nearly unchanged left side of the street. I wonder if the photographer that took the original photo had to dodge horses and carriages the way I was dodging SUVs and tour buses! In any case, Park City truly is two cities...a modern resort town laid over a long gone ghost town. I hope I was able to capture a sense of that with this film.

By Dave Hogan