Images and cultural heritage : Sense of past and sense of place in Bodie American ghost town.

Past and Place are two crucial terms referring to Heritage. Usually, the Past is linked with Time while Places are related to the Experience. Both reveal the central role of perception, but there is a boundary primarily marked by tourism as a phenomenon between theoretical and Heritage practices. An inspiring case study about these topics is the forgotten city of Bodie in California. The highly aesthetic of Bodie represents the western gold fever in American History. In this sense, Bodie displays the link between American Memory and History. If we consider Bodie as an extreme case, the perception of ‘memory-images’ transforms the authenticity of the cultural asset. Considering the maintenance process of Bodie and the motto ‘Arresting Decay’, the value of authenticity in the sense of Past is related to the sense of Time. Nevertheless, separating Time by Aging, Decay from the ‘poetic nature of architecture', the presence of an authentic experience of History and Time ensures the continuity for cultural heritage to empower its communicative force over time. The sense of Time as a lyrical force linked with experiencing authenticity is a cultural asset that remarks the distance between authenticity and Disneyfication. The presence of Time intended as History, in an authentically and not fictional dimension, is the limit between experiencing touristic attractions and visiting cultural monuments. In this border, Bodie, as an American Ruin, reveals its contemporaneity because it displays (and plays) with the idea of the public as a performer and as a visitor at the same time.