I took this photograph on the grounds of a retirement home that had closed, as a prelude to inevitable development. I am drawn to abandoned spaces, and abandoned spaces don't last long in Santa Monica. What can be more desolate that a building where people with nowhere else to go had come to die -- and now this last refuge had been emptied. Why was the shabby flag still on display? Why was the walker abandoned beside it? Such an unlikely thing to be forgotten -- outside, beside a flag. After I took the photo I thought, maybe Atlantic Monthly will buy this to illustrate an article on the American health care system. Not that I know how to sell photos to Atlantic Monthly, but hope springs eternal for those who take desolate photographs.

The nature of the photographic process - it is about failure. Most everything I do doesn’t quite make it. The failures can be intelligent; nothing ventured nothing gained. Hopefully you’re risking failing every time you make a frame.

--Garry Winogrand