The impetus for "Stories Fading Fast," an exhibit of ghostly photos of derelict Alaska mining sites, came from an old map of the Fairbanks area. "I was looking at this thing and realized it showed all kinds of small communities that are not around any more," said photographer J. Jason Lazarus.
Lazarus, who admits to having an "Indiana Jones streak," took his cameras and went exploring. "Usually I found absolutely nothing. Sometimes a foundation or maybe an outhouse. But every once in a while I'd find a whole settlement, five or six buildings and artifacts."
Though deserted, the sites retained an echo of the pulse of human activity that had once enlivened them, plucky and struggling people far from home, many grasping at their last straws, isolated in a vast, difficult landscape that was at once magnificent, bleak and lethal.
Read more: Raising the dead: Photographer aims to catch Alaska mining relics before they fade forever
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