Alleys & Ruins no. 113, Truck Stop (2008, Milwaukee, WI, 1am)

Alleys & Ruins no. 113, Truck Stop (2008, Milwaukee, WI, 1am)
 
A short behind-the-scenes video is available here.
 
While in Milwaukee's historic Third Ward, I was thrilled to find an old abandoned 1957 Chevy truck, sitting at the end of an alley surrounded by abandoned buildings, and slowly becoming one with the earth. It was unclear what this truck did for a living, but it had been sitting in this alley for years waiting for its close-up. On the truck's bed was another old truck in even worse condition, having been in a fire.

It almost seemed like the Chevy had sprung from the fertile ground, the way it was surrounded by lush greenery. I wasn't sure how to bring this idea to life, but I lit the grass with fluorescent green light to give it a little more power, and then worked on the truck with blue lights to give it life.
 
The old cabover trucks are snub nosed, giving them a real face and lots of character. Then there are the 2 headlights... While everything else is rusted and broken, these 2 lights are almost sparkling and beaming with joy. I imagined an elf emerging daily to give them a good polish!

In the years following the shoot, several people from the city told me the truck had sat there for at least 10 years. While in Milwaukee in Nov 2010, I dropped in, and there she was! On my last visit, in 2014, the old Chevy had finally moved on.
 
In the book, the image is paired with an encounter on another night in a different part of the city:
 
I meet Steve in Milwaukee at night while I’m out looking for places to shoot.
Steve was a high-energy kid who partied hard with his friends. But at 19 he’s convicted of his third DUI. The judge sends him to jail for three months in Arizona, where he’s placed in a rehabilitation program. It teaches the hazards of drugs and alcohol, but also pushes a moral code: you can “save others” by reporting them. Inmates are urged to come clean not only about themselves but about those around them. Later I look into it and find it’s tied to a wave of jail-based programs in the late 80s and 90s modeled after the federal Stay’n Out and “therapeutic community” approach, where informing is framed as proof of rehabilitation. Steve doesn’t know the name of the program, but he carries its inevitable consequences with him.
As he tells me the story, he stops and leans forward, his voice dropping almost to a whisper. Then he looks down. He says he was so brainwashed by the program that one day, when he sees two inmates he knows using drugs, he goes straight to the authorities. They get busted. From that moment on, Steve is branded a rat. Things happen after that he won’t talk about.
When he gets out, trouble keeps circling back to him. He’s in and out of prison for the next 15 years, each time still known as a rat. His biggest regret in life, the thing he can’t forgive himself for, is that he snitched on those two men.
And yet tonight, standing next to me, it’s hard to see that burden. He laughs often, and he laughs like he means it, even when his story is painful to hear.