Photos: J. Jason Lazarus, "Remnants of the Alaskan Gold Rush"

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"Mining Apparition, Fern Mine, Talkeetna Mountains."

The impetus for "Stories Fading Fast," an exhibit of ghostly photos of derelict Alaska mining sites, came from an old map of the Fairbanks area. "I was looking at this thing and realized it showed all kinds of small communities that are not around any more," said photographer J. Jason Lazarus.

Lazarus, who admits to having an "Indiana Jones streak," took his cameras and went exploring. Though deserted, the sites retained an echo of the pulse of human activity that had once enlivened them, plucky and struggling people far from home, many grasping at their last straws, isolated in a vast, difficult landscape that was at once magnificent, bleak and lethal.

"The places weren't just dead, empty husks," Lazarus said. "I wanted to embody the buildings with stories from the past."

To tell those stories, Lazarus superimposed models on the scenes. He used a primitive print technique known as Van Dyke Brown to create images that, on first glance, seem to be historical photos. The effect is like looking through a time tunnel into the past.

Read more: Photographer aims to catch Alaska mining relics before they fade forever