• Front Porch
• Tom Rankin

Shelton Hedgepeth's pier, Bee Lake, Holmes County, Mississippi, 2006. All photographs by Tom Rankin.

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I have always been drawn to those places that mark the landscape, serve as our monuments of remembrance and guide our way and knowledge of the local, seeming to last in our consciousness even when they have nearly disappeared on a return to their previous unbuilt state. "It's over there where Cedric's house used to be," we might say, giving directions to someone. I am also forever lured into those landscapes where humanmade structures seem to insist on inevitable presence with a kind of naïve arrogance, precariously attempting to coexist with the natural world at the peril of both. Surveying the southern landscape, we find countless examples of the built world that project confident illusions of permanence, environments created for singular and communal purposes that are fully a part of what's truly here, but also what is perpetually going and destined to be gone. This Built/Unbuilt special issue, so beautifully guest edited by Burak Erdim, brings insight and conversation to all of this, from the nuances of building a home in a new place to our collective quest to discover paradise in tarnished, overbuilt landscapes.

John R. Lynch monument, Greenwood Cemetery, Jackson, Mississippi, 2014.

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My first impulse as a young photographer was to make pictures of people, often portraits, with only a passing interest in photographing what I considered the inanimate—the cultural landscape of the built world. I had even less interest in making images of the purely natural world. I thought somehow to express anything visually about the human experience required humans in the picture; to be sure, this was the urge of the novice finding a path with a camera, beginning a long apprenticeship of discerning just how best to interpret, express, and reveal the human condition. I've always remembered Walker Evans's comment to a group of Harvard University students two days before he died: "I am fascinated by man's work and the civilization he's built," he said. "I think that's the interesting thing in the world, what man does." Reflecting on my own photographs of what we find in the landscape, of constructed worlds, I discover abiding themes of making and unmaking, the built and unbuilt, the overlooked and the disappearing.¹

over two decades ago, I met Shelton "Plum" Hedgepeth at a hunting camp in Lodi, Mississippi. Shelton earned his nickname from his work as a plumber, and I knew him for several years before I learned his given name. A number of years ago, my friend Wiley Prewitt and I went to visit and fish with Shelton at his home on Bee Lake near Tchula, Mississippi, in Holmes County. His house was perched on the edge of the oxbow lake so that he could nearly roll out of bed and into a fishing boat. A tenacious outdoorsman, Shelton was driven day-to-day mostly by the challenge of catching that next fish, harvesting yet another deer, finding a way to be fully within the unpredictable wonder of the natural world. With the help of his carpenter nephew and assistant, Shelton imagined and constructed one of the most beautiful and simple docks I've ever seen on a lake, a slender treated-lumber pier that snakes its way through a stand of Mississippi Delta cypress trees. No matter how close we get to the water's edge, there always seems to be the lure and desire of being just a bit closer, to even more fully experience the water.

To build in the water is its own challenge and enterprise, physically trying with the necessary acceptance that anything built there is fundamentally temporal, regardless of the quality of construction. For Shelton, it was all about finding a way to exist alongside and within the wildness of the lake, the cypress trees and mosquitoes, the meeting of land and water. To witness the beginning of a building project such as this pier is a gift. I don...

• 前阳台
• 汤姆·兰金

Shelton Hedgepeth 的码头，蜜蜂湖，密西西比州福尔摩斯县，2006 年。所有照片均由 Tom Rankin 拍摄。

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我一直被吸引那些标志着景观的地方，作为我们的纪念纪念碑，指导我们的方式和当地知识，即使它们在恢复到以前的未建成状态时几乎消失了，但它们似乎仍然存在于我们的意识中。“就在那里，塞德里克的房子曾经在那里，”我们可能会说，给某人指路。我也永远被引诱到那些人造结构似乎坚持不可避免的存在以一种天真的傲慢的景观中，在两者的危险下，岌岌可危地试图与自然世界共存。纵观南部景观，我们发现无数建筑世界的例子，它们投射出自信的永恒幻觉，为单一和公共目的而创造的环境完全是这里真正的一部分，但也有永恒的东西和注定要消失的东西。这已建/未建特刊，由 Burak Erdim 精心编辑，为所有这一切带来洞察力和对话，从在新地方建造房屋的细微差别到我们集体寻求在失去光泽、过度建造的景观中发现天堂。

约翰·林奇纪念碑，格林伍德公墓，杰克逊，密西西比州，2014 年。

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作为一名年轻摄影师，我的第一个冲动是拍摄人物照片，通常是肖像，只是对拍摄我认为是无生命的东西——建筑世界的文化景观——只有短暂的兴趣。我对制作纯自然世界的图像更没有兴趣。我想以某种方式表达关于人类体验的任何视觉形象，需要人类在图片中；可以肯定的是，这是新手用相机找到一条路的冲动，开始了漫长的学徒期，以辨别如何最好地解释、表达和揭示人类状况。我一直记得沃克埃文斯在他去世前两天对一群哈佛大学学生的评论：“我对人类的工作和他建立的文明着迷，”他说。“我认为这是世界上有趣的事情，人类的所作所为。”反思我自己在风景中发现的东西，构建世界的照片，我发现了制造和破坏、建造和未建造、被忽视和消失的永恒主题^。1

二十多年前我在密西西比州洛迪的一个狩猎营地遇到了谢尔顿“梅花”赫奇佩斯。Shelton 的绰号来自他的水管工工作，在我知道他的名字之前，我已经认识他好几年了。几年前，我和我的朋友威利·普雷维特 (Wiley Prewitt) 和谢尔顿一起去他位于密西西比州霍姆斯县 Tchula 附近蜜蜂湖的家中钓鱼。他的房子坐落在牛轭湖的边缘，所以他几乎可以从床上滚到渔船上。作为一名顽强的户外爱好者，谢尔顿每天都面临着捕捉下一条鱼的挑战，收获另一只鹿，找到一种完全融入自然世界不可预测的奇迹的方法。在他的木匠侄子和助手的帮助下，谢尔顿想象并建造了我在湖上见过的最美丽、最简单的码头之一，一个细长的木材处理过的码头蜿蜒穿过密西西比三角洲的柏树。无论我们离水边有多近，似乎总有一种诱惑和渴望靠近一点，更充分地体验水。

在水中建造是它自己的挑战和事业，在物理上尝试并接受必要的接受，无论建造质量如何，在那里建造的任何东西从根本上都是时间性的。对谢尔顿来说，这一切都是为了找到一种方式，在湖的荒野、柏树和蚊子、陆地和水的交汇处和内部生存。见证像这个码头这样的建筑项目的开始是一种礼物。我不...