21st Annual Smithsonian Magazine Photo Contest Artistic
In-between Time and Space Series #7

Hidden behind the large BP refinery in East Chicago, Indiana, lies a small town with narrow streets and old European-scale homes.   Once a thriving community, Marktown was a planned company town founded by Clayton Mark and designed by Howard Van Doren Show for workers at Mark Manufacturing in 1917. Unlike the Pullman community in Chicago which has been preserved with the status of National Historical Park, Marktown is one of many company towns that have slowly been abandoned, boarded up or demolished because of company shutdowns, worker exodus and residual pollutants.   The spectral remains of a working-class community facing an ever more uncertain future are what inspired the In-between Time and Space Series of photographs that extend a decade of work capturing the transitory nature of our world and the ethereal spirit that lingers.    Some people remain:  like a man named Paul living in a house his grandparents had bought and now home to four generations including his son.   The ashes of his family are scattered in a small green park nearby where he intends his ashes to also reside.   Like the wind and the sunrise, this is the life that endures surrounded by abandoned homes and businesses that history has forgotten.

Photo Detail
Date Taken: 07.2023
Date Uploaded: 11.2023
Photo Location: Marktown, Indiana, United States of America
Camera: NIKON D850
Copyright: © Iwona Biedermann