The eerie Americana of photographer Ed Freeman - in pictures
After a 25-year career in the music industry, during which he produced Don McLean's American Pie, Ed Freeman returned to his original love of photography. While driving around southern Californian deserts to photograph landscapes, he was struck by the beauty of the desolate buildings he passed on the way. "I wanted to appreciate these old, falling-apart buildings that no one pays any attention to. So I photographed them as if they were the most important thing on Earth," he says. "I really love the desert: it's a place of independence and freedom, and during the winter the weather is beautiful. It's incredibly peaceful and quiet: you can drive a hundred miles and not see a single person"
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Cal-Tex Auto Parts, Coachella, CA
'This was the first one I took. There were people going in and out of this store all day long. Three years later it was torn down'Photograph: Ed Freeman
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Trailer, Salton City, CA
'This trailer looked so happy, like it was smiling – there were kids playing in front of it and it was full of life. I went again later and it was abandoned'Photograph: Ed Freeman
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Abandoned House, Niland, CA
'This feels like a sad picture to me – there's such a contrast between the house, which looks like it's dying, and the incredibly healthy bougainvillea'Photograph: Ed Freeman
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Abandoned Store, Thermal, CA
'This was just an abandoned store. It was in a really small, deserted town called Thermal, which had nothing going on there'Photograph: Ed Freeman
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Sundowner Motel, Desert Shores, CA
'This was next to a lake. Everyone thought it was going to be a great resort, but it became very polluted and all these fancy motels fell apart'Photograph: Ed Freeman
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El Morocco Motel, Bakersfield, CA
'The desert is a very independent place. There's no laws, really, you can just do anything you want. There are some very strange characters living out there – some of them very friendly, some not very friendly'Photograph: Ed Freeman
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Eddie's Cafe, Santa Paula, CA
'Some of these buildings were actually in small towns and had buildings right next to them. Others were out in the middle of nowhere, and they really were very lonely old buildings'Photograph: Ed Freeman
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Garage, Trona CA
'I think these buildings are beautiful. They're funny and ironic and sad at the same time, because they're really dying'Photograph: Ed Freeman
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Quonset Hut, Trona, CA
'I wanted to pay homage to the buildings, so I'm singling them out and making them special'Photograph: Ed Freeman
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Abandoned Gas Station, Niland, CA
'These pictures are somewhere between photographs and paintings. They're real photographs of real buildings, but the environments have changed'Photograph: Ed Freeman
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Post Office, Darwin CA
'I'd clean up the picture and clean up the background and put the right sky in, to complement the buildings. The mountain range in the background is always the same'Photograph: Ed Freeman
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Airstream Trailer, Desert Shores, CA
'I treated the buildings like an architectural model, so people could appreciate them instead of just being part of a landscape'Photograph: Ed Freeman
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