Abandoned Texaco Marina Florida ICW Black And White | Wall Art

Weathered Fuel Tanks Along The Intracoastal Waterway

I photographed this abandoned Texaco marina while sailing north along Florida’s Intracoastal Waterway. From the water, the old fuel dock appeared almost swallowed by the shoreline: leaning pilings, broken sections of dock, tall grasses, weathered tanks, utility poles, and dense trees surrounding what had once been a working waterfront business.

The pair of large cylindrical fuel tanks immediately held my attention. Their stained, peeling surfaces dominate the right side of the photograph, while the battered dock stretches horizontally across the foreground. On the left, an old Texaco sign sits at an angle among the vegetation, still recognizable but no longer announcing a functioning marina. That combination of commercial relics, advancing vegetation, and neglected waterfront structure is exactly what draws me toward urban decay photography. Nothing has been staged or preserved for appearance. It is simply a place caught somewhere between its working past and whatever eventually replaces it.

I have always been interested in photographing places like this because they rarely remain unchanged for long. I stumbled upon this marina from the boat rather than arriving with a location already in mind, and that made the discovery even better. These forgotten roadside and waterfront remnants are gradually removed, cleaned up, redeveloped, or simply collapse. I cannot preserve the place itself, but I can preserve what it looked like when I passed it.

The black-and-white treatment concentrates attention on texture and structure: the dark streaks running down the tanks, rough dock timbers, crooked pilings, rippled water, tangled grasses, and layered pine trees behind the marina. Without color competing for attention, the photograph becomes more about age, surfaces, and the visual contrast between an engineered waterfront facility and the vegetation reclaiming the property.

I can see this photograph working particularly well as wall art in a contemporary, industrial, rustic, or coastal interior, especially for collectors drawn to abandoned places, old Florida, nautical subjects, and disappearing pieces of American roadside and waterfront history.

I offer this photograph as a limited edition of only 10 prints. Each print is personally signed by me and includes a certificate of authenticity. I print the edition using archival pigment inks on premium archival paper, giving the fine detail, tonal range, and weathered surfaces the presence I want in the finished print. For me, the photograph belongs naturally among images of bygone era wall art, where ordinary places from yesterday survive long after their original purpose has faded.

© Dan Kosmayer, 2009