Road to Ruins

Recent Arizona transplants, let us enlighten you about the infamous “Scottsdale Galleria” rule: Why revitalize a perfectly good building when you can abandon it and build more strip malls less than a mile away? Until local developers get wise to the joys of recycling, Phoenix will continue to be littered with the carcasses of aging buildings. Sucks for everyone else, but it’s a goldmine of opportunity for photographer William LeGoullon, whose poignant images capture the hidden beauty of Arizona’s rundown racetracks and dilapidated motels. In one of the images included in his “Dust: William ‘Bill’ LeGoullon” exhibit, titled Black Canyon Race Track Seats, rows of white and yellow theater-style seats stand like an army of plastic soldiers in the quiet, untouched tomb of a former dog track. Says LeGoullon, “These are places with stories of their own that continue to change and evolve at a slow and quiet pace, where behind every corner and through each doorway is another opening to the past and future.” The future? Guess we know exactly what post-Apocalyptic Phoenix will look like come 2012.
Fri., July 3, 6-10 p.m., 2009