NEW WORK – DAN MARTENSEN


We love supporting new talent. Every issue, we try to feature a few unpublished works from some of our favorite artists. We give them free rein of a full-spread; the only limitations are the generous dimensions of the page. For our Spring issue, New York-based photographer (and frequent The Last Magazine contributor) sent over his stark photograph of an abandoned West Texas diner. Here’s what he had to say about it.

This picture actually made the cover of my book. When I walked up to this place, I wasn’t sure if it was still open or not. It wasn’t until I pulled on the door that I realized it was locked and the restaurant had closed. When I peered in the window I realized it was obviously shut for business even though there were still chairs at the tables and napkins out. It almost felt like it had shut for good only ten minutes before I got there. I remember it being an eerie feeling so I took a picture. Driving across America, you see a lot of shuttered doors, lots of vacant restaurants and shops. Like dead bodies. Some fresh and newly dead like this one, some dead for years and swallowed up by the earth. There’s a lot of this theme in the book.

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