By some trick of fate, I was offered the job of director of Whitesbog Village. I came to visit in the dark and saw moss, ferns, bogs, cranberries, trees and sand all around a quaint village of cedar clad cottages. In the middle of the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, they have a historic general store full of jams and jellies and other goodies and I have an office in a tiny cottage where I can look out at the birds, hikers, horse-back riders, photographers and folks who visit everyday or for the first time since they were little and came here on a school field trip.
This overhead view shows the houses, factories, sheds, barns, cottages and ruins surrounded by forest and active cranberry bogs. The red roofs on the houses are striking against the cedar siding. Each of the buildings has been painstakingly rebuilt from the rotting wood remnants left from the days it was a ghost town before Whitesbog Preservation Trust started raising funds and applying for grants to help keep the buildings from collapsing.
I started photographing my first day there and have not stopped. I started posting to Instagram and found a collection of local photographers who post their images there using the hashtag #whitesbog
