Wanette, Oklahoma

This This past Independence Day, my best friend and pho­to­graphic con­spir­a­tor Joe Crumley and I drove to see the aban­doned Gandini Circus camp in Edmond. It was a great dis­s­a­point­ment — most of the struc­tures are gone, and over­grown green­ery obscured the rest, mak­ing it unsuit­able to photograph.

We decided to go south to a ghost town in Pottawatamie County. We didn’t find it. Either that, or we drove right through it, but there was noth­ing to see. Joe remem­bered there was a small town nearby, so we headed to where he thought it was. That town was Wanette, pop­u­la­tion 350 (accord­ing to the 2010 census).

We had lunch at the local eatery, Cookie’s Café. Then we spent an hour or so pho­tograph­ing what’s left of the com­mer­cial district.

Camera

Rolleiflex 2.8c

Lens

Schneider Xenotar 50mm ƒ/2.8

Focal length

80mm

Exposure Index

EI 125

Film

Kodak Plus-X Pan 125 — stand devel­op­ment with day­light tank in Adox Adonal (Rodinal) (1:100) for ~60 min­utes — 5 min­utes in Kodafix

Tripod

Gitzo Traveler Series 1 GT1542T car­bon fibre tri­pod with Arca-Swiss P0 pan­ning ball head + Slidefix QS quick release clamp

Digitization & post-production

Epson per­fec­tion V850 scan­ner with VueScan scan­ning soft­ware, Adobe Lightroom, NIK Silver Efex Pro, and Adobe Photoshop.