What happens to a town when there’s no reason to stick around anymore?

Bodie happens.

Bodie is a bona fide ghost town smack in the middle of the Sierra Nevada mountains. At one time rumored to have a population rivaling the size of Los Angeles (10,000+), this small mining town boomed almost as fast as it bust. Bodie was founded in 1859 near rich gold and silver veins and largely abandoned (despite dwindling residency until the early 1960s) by the end of that century. What remains became a California State Park in 1961, preserved in a state of arrested decay.

This book is the culmination of weeks worth of research, travel, and firsthand experience. By using personal photography and custom designed typefaces, I was able to provide more extensive art directing as well as a more defined narrative to the project. In a sense, the book became a love letter to the town. A special thank you to the Bodie Foundation for continuing to fund the maintenance of this incredible location. The required deliverables for this project include a book and a poster series.

Medium format infrared film photography was used to magnify the feelings of isolation and desolation felt throughout the town. These and other photos I shot are used throughout the project.

Along with getting to use a font designed in a previous class (see Django), I generated another typeface to use at larger sizes throughout the book and posters. More information on that typeface, affectionately titled Bodie Revival, can be found here.

A friend and I collect vintage film negatives in an ongoing project we call Film Forgotten. One of the anonymous photographers made the journey to Bodie many years ago, so I replicated their shots (in color) with my pictures (in black and white) and created layered collages. These are featured alongside an essay addressing road trip culture in America.

Paper changes and various tip-in styles leverage the materiality of the book and make it feel more special. In the same way that Bodie exists through the form of objects left behind, I created the book with similar ornate surprises.

It is believed that if you take an item from Bodie, you will become cursed. Several people have tested this theory and subsequently sent back the items, often with a letter detailing the consequences. A binder containing some of these letters can be found in the Bodie visitor’s center. This publication features copies of some of my favorites alongside photography of objects found around Bodie.

A series of posters were designed to prominently feature both the photography of Bodie and the typeface designed for the book. In the wild these would be placed in sequences or pairs, as long as at least one of the posters was the type-driven variant.