How do you photograph absence? As I walked around Shawneetown this afternoon, I found myself staring more at vacant lots and decrepit signs than I did most of what remains. I can–and did–snap pics of those, but what do those still images convey?
A faded sign doesn’t just recall a shuttered restaurant; it evokes memories of the family that operated it, the ways they injected life into the community, happy dinners in vinyl booths. A shuttered restaurant doesn’t just provide new wall space for “for sale” signs. It’s a tale of loss, of decline, of a place where people once gathered that has been lost, and may never return.
But that vacant lot? The empty spaces have a powerful history and many of the locals are its historians, if not its archaeologists. Because even as the buildings pass, some of the die-hards survive, holding together the Shawneetown-that-was even as the past confronts a very physical erasure.
Shawneetown’s population, never substantial, has dropped by 50% over the last three decades. The 2000 census revealed a median income for a Shawneetown household of $20,789. An article in The Southern Illinoisan spells out the challenges for the region in even greater, alarming detail: a higher poverty rate than Appalachia, shrinking populations and schools, closed mines and factories with few new employment options, seven of the region’s counties placed in the top 10 in the US for Schedule II opioid prescriptions per patient in 2016, child abuse rates are double the state average, while child sexual abuse rates are triple.
As ghastly as some of those numbers might be, people here are striving to hold things together, sustaining community through generosity. A knock on my door last night brought back Steve, sent over by his wife with a home-cooked meal for me. A man restocking the shelves at Dollar General reached out this morning, to introduce me to the communal grill where I could cook, and to a woman who would share utensils with me. My hotel’s owner has checked in a few times, to make sure that I’m comfortable and that I have no needs. There is immense kindness present here.
But the absence? The absence risks overpowering all, an abnegation of the Shawneetown that was.
